How can I get the current date and time in UTC or GMT in Java?

Answer 1

This works for getting UTC milliseconds in Android.

Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
int utcOffset = c.get(Calendar.ZONE_OFFSET) + c.get(Calendar.DST_OFFSET);  
Long utcMilliseconds = c.getTimeInMillis() + utcOffset;

Answer 2

To put it simple. A calendar object stores information about time zone but when you perform cal.getTime() then the timezone information will be lost. So for Timezone conversions I will advice to use DateFormat classes...

Answer 3

You can directly use this

SimpleDateFormat dateFormatGmt = new SimpleDateFormat("dd:MM:yyyy HH:mm:ss");
dateFormatGmt.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
System.out.println(dateFormatGmt.format(new Date())+"");

Answer 4

Calendar aGMTCalendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT")); Then all operations performed using the aGMTCalendar object will be done with the GMT time zone and will not have the daylight savings time or fixed offsets applied

Wrong!

Calendar aGMTCalendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
aGMTCalendar.getTime(); //or getTimeInMillis()

and

Calendar aNotGMTCalendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT-2"));aNotGMTCalendar.getTime();

will return the same time. Idem for

new Date(); //it's not GMT.

Answer 5

SimpleDateFormat dateFormatGmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
dateFormatGmt.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
System.out.println(dateFormatGmt.format(date));

Answer 6

This definitely returns UTC time: as String and Date objects !

static final String DATE_FORMAT = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss";

public static Date getUTCdatetimeAsDate() {
    // note: doesn't check for null
    return stringDateToDate(getUTCdatetimeAsString());
}

public static String getUTCdatetimeAsString() {
    final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT);
    sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
    final String utcTime = sdf.format(new Date());

    return utcTime;
}

public static Date stringDateToDate(String StrDate) {
    Date dateToReturn = null;
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(DATEFORMAT);

    try {
        dateToReturn = (Date)dateFormat.parse(StrDate);
    }
    catch (ParseException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return dateToReturn;
}