How to get UTC offset in seconds in android

Question

I\'m trying to get the UTC offset in seconds in android. Since the emulator keeps returning 0, I can\'t tell if I\'m doing this correctly or not.

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Answer 1

Time Zone offsets can change during the year, perhaps the most common reason is Daylight Savings Time. Instead of passing 0 to TimeZone.getOffset() uses the current time to get the current offset, create a new Date and get its Time value:

TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getDefault();
Date now = new Date();
int offsetFromUtc = tz.getOffset(now.getTime()) / 1000;

The emulator defaults to UTC, try checking the available timezones to test. Also you can pass a timezone switch to set the timezone, check the documentation for -timezone.