Getting GMT time with Android

I have been digging into the question for a while in StackOverflow Android get Current UTC time and How can I get the current date and time in UTC or GMT in Java?

I have tried two ways to get the current time of my phone in GMT. I am in Spain and the difference is GMT+2. So let's see with an example: 1º attemp: I created a format and applied it to System.currentTimeMillis();

    DateFormat dfgmt = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss");   
    dfgmt.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT")); 
    String gmtTime = dfgmt.format(new Date());
    //Using System.cur开发者_运维百科rentTimeMillis() is the same as new Date()
    Date dPhoneTime = dfgmt.parse(gmtTime);
    Long phoneTimeUTC = dPhoneTime.getTime();

I need to substract that time to another time, that's why i do the cast to Long.

    DateFormat df = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss");          
    Date arrivalDate = df.parse(item.getArrivalDate());
    //the String comes from JSON and is for example:"UTC_arrival":"2011-05-16 18:00:00"
    //which already is in UTC format. So the DateFormat doesnt have the GMT paramater as dfgmt
    diff = arrival.getTime() - phoneTimeUTC ;

I also tried this:

    Calendar aGMTCalendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
    Long phoneTimeUTC = aGMTCalendar.getTimeInMillis()

And still I dont get the right difference. But if I do this:

    Long phoneTimeUTC = aGMTCalendar.getTimeInMillis()-3600000*2;

It does work OK.

Any ideas?

Thanks a lot,

David.

This works for sure!

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

Specify the format, and you will get it in GMT!

As far as I read the calendar.getTimeInMillis(); returns the UTC time in millis. I used the following code and compared it to the Epoch in this site http://www.xav.com/time.cgi.

public int GetUnixTime()
{
    Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
    long now = calendar.getTimeInMillis();
    int utc = (int)(now / 1000);
    return (utc);

}

Giora

     Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
     Date currentLocalTime = cal.getTime();
     DateFormat date = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyy HH:mm:ss z");   
     date.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT")); 
     String localTime = date.format(currentLocalTime); 
     System.out.println(localTime);

Have a look and see if that works.

you can always use:

Calendar mCalendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("gmt"));
long millies = mCalendar.getTimeInMillis();

or

Calendar mCalendar = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("utc"));
long millies = mCalendar.getTimeInMillis();

Output: 2016-08-01 14:37:48 UTC

    final SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z");
    dateFormat.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

Works fine.

java.time and ThreeTenABP

I am providing the modern answer.

To get the difference in milliseconds between the phone time now — in Spain or any other place — and a certain time in the past:

    // Example arrival time for the demonstration
    Instant arrival = Instant.parse("2020-02-29T12:34:56.789Z");
    Instant currentTime = Instant.now();
    long difference = ChronoUnit.MILLIS.between(arrival, currentTime);
    System.out.println("Difference is " + difference + " milliseconds");

Example output:

Difference is 2610350731 milliseconds

If you want the difference in seconds or some other time unit, just use the appropriate enum constant from the ChronoUnit enum instead of ChronoUnit.MILLIS.

There is no need to worry about the device time zone, nor about formatting or parsing the time, those worries only lead to over-complication of this basically simple matter.

BTW the epoch is one well-defined point in time, it doesn’t vary with time zone, it’s the same all over the world. Therefore the count of milliseconds from the epoch till now is also the same in all time zones. Some say that this count is always in UTC because the epoch is (usually) defined in UTC, as January 1, 1970 at 00:00 UTC.

Question: Doesn’t java.time require Android API level 26?

java.time works nicely on both older and newer Android devices. It just requires at least Java 6.

• In Java 8 and later and on newer Android devices (from API level 26) the modern API comes built-in.
• In non-Android Java 6 and 7 get the ThreeTen Backport, the backport of the modern classes (ThreeTen for JSR 310; see the links at the bottom).
• On (older) Android use the Android edition of ThreeTen Backport. It’s called ThreeTenABP. And make sure you import the date and time classes from org.threeten.bp with subpackages.

Links

• Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time.
• Java Specification Request (JSR) 310, where java.time was first described.
• ThreeTen Backport project, the backport of java.time to Java 6 and 7 (ThreeTen for JSR-310).
• ThreeTenABP, Android edition of ThreeTen Backport
• Question: How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project, with a very thorough explanation.