SimpleDateFormat parsing date differently on some android devices

Question

I am parsing the date as:

public class Consts{
public static final SimpleDateFormat DATE_FORMATTER_WITHOUT_TIME_ZONE = new SimpleDateFormat(
            \"yyyy-M         


        

Answer 1

You can extend SimpleDateFormat and override its format(...) function as following:

public class ExSimpleDateFormat extends SimpleDateFormat{

    private static final long serialVersionUID = -8275126788734707527L;

    public ExSimpleDateFormat() {

        super();
    }

    public ExSimpleDateFormat(String string, Locale us) {

        super(string, us);
    }

    @Override
    public StringBuffer format(Date date, StringBuffer toAppendTo, java.text.FieldPosition pos)
    {            
        final StringBuffer buf = super.format(date, toAppendTo, pos);
        buf.insert(buf.length() - 2, ':');
        return buf;
    };
}

And execute following code:

Calendar ca = Calendar.getInstance();       
ca.setTimeInMillis(System.currentTimeMillis());
ExSimpleDateFormat exSimpleDateFormat = new ExSimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss 'GMT'Z", Locale.US);
exSimpleDateFormat.setTimeZone(ca.getTimeZone()); //your device timezone which can be GMT+xx:yy or GMT-xx:yy
String desiredTime = exSimpleDateFormat.format(ca.getTime());

Output would be like: 23-03-2015 23:12:52 GMT+05:00

Let me know if it helps. Thanks

Answer 2

The difference is caused by different locales set up on devices.

To mitigate the locale differences, you should use particular locale while formatting the date string. Here is a sample from my code, solving the same issue:

new SimpleDateFormat(C.FORMAT_DATETIMEZ, Locale.US).format(new Date(time))