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

Answer 1

Actually not time, but it's representation could be changed.

SimpleDateFormat f = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss");
f.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
System.out.println(f.format(new Date()));

Time is the same in any point of the Earth, but our perception of time could be different depending on location.

Answer 2

Here an other suggestion to get a GMT Timestamp object:

import java.sql.Timestamp;
import java.util.Calendar;

...

private static Timestamp getGMT() {
   Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
   return new Timestamp(cal.getTimeInMillis()
                       -cal.get(Calendar.ZONE_OFFSET)
                       -cal.get(Calendar.DST_OFFSET));
}

Answer 3

You can use:

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. I think the previous poster is correct that the Date() object always returns a GMT it's not until you go to do something with the date object that it gets converted to the local time zone.

Answer 4

public class CurrentUtcDate 
{
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Date date = new Date();
        SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss");
        dateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
        System.out.println("UTC Time is: " + dateFormat.format(date));
    }
}

Output:

UTC Time is: 22-01-2018 13:14:35

You can change the date format as needed.

Answer 5

With:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();

Then cal have the current date and time.
You also could get the current Date and Time for timezone with:

Calendar cal2 = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT-2"));

You could ask cal.get(Calendar.DATE); or other Calendar constant about others details.
Date and Timestamp are deprecated in Java. Calendar class it isn't.

Answer 6

Here is my implementation of toUTC:

    public static Date toUTC(Date date){
    long datems = date.getTime();
    long timezoneoffset = TimeZone.getDefault().getOffset(datems);
    datems -= timezoneoffset;
    return new Date(datems);
}

There's probably several ways to improve it, but it works for me.