How to change the timezone in Mirth?

I am a Mirth Newbie trying to change the timezone stamped onto outgoing messages. Mirth currently stamps the current time on messages--only in greenwich mean time. I want to stamp messages with US central time.

Here is the code from the transformer that is adding in the dates: var dateString = DateUtil.getCurrentDate("yyyyMMddHHmmss"); tmp['MSH']['MSH.7']['MSH.7开发者_Go百科.1'] = dateString ;

I have a few questions about how to solve this:

1. Is there a way to change the timezone from within mirth?
2. If not, is there a way to change the default timezone in Java?

Worst case, I can adjust the date in the javascript--but then I'll have to resolve this each time I want to add the current time to a message.

You can access basic Java classes, so there is no need to re-invent the wheel for timezone conversions...

function getCurrentLocalTimestamp() {
   var formatter = new Packages.java.text.SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMddhhmmss"); 
   // your local TZ
   formatter.setTimeZone(Packages.java.util.TimeZone.getTimeZone("EST")); 
   return formatter.format(new Packages.java.util.Date()); 
}

tmp['MSH']['MSH.7']['MSH.7.1'] = getCurrentLocalTimestamp();

This will format the date in JavaScript. This is not terribly efficient, but the logic of the formatter can be put into a more generic location so that it is shared.

The original code for the date formatting came from here: http://jacwright.com/projects/javascript/date_format/

// Simulates PHP's date function
Date.prototype.format = function(format) {
    var returnStr = '';
    var replace = Date.replaceChars;
    for (var i = 0; i < format.length; i++) {       var curChar = format.charAt(i);         if (i - 1 >= 0 && format.charAt(i - 1) == "\\") {
            returnStr += curChar;
        }
        else if (replace[curChar]) {
            returnStr += replace[curChar].call(this);
        } else if (curChar != "\\"){
            returnStr += curChar;
        }
    }
    return returnStr;
};

Date.replaceChars = {
    shortMonths: ['Jan', 'Feb', 'Mar', 'Apr', 'May', 'Jun', 'Jul', 'Aug', 'Sep', 'Oct', 'Nov', 'Dec'],
    longMonths: ['January', 'February', 'March', 'April', 'May', 'June', 'July', 'August', 'September', 'October', 'November', 'December'],
    shortDays: ['Sun', 'Mon', 'Tue', 'Wed', 'Thu', 'Fri', 'Sat'],
    longDays: ['Sunday', 'Monday', 'Tuesday', 'Wednesday', 'Thursday', 'Friday', 'Saturday'],

    // Day
    d: function() { return (this.getDate() < 10 ? '0' : '') + this.getDate(); },
    D: function() { return Date.replaceChars.shortDays[this.getDay()]; },
    j: function() { return this.getDate(); },
    l: function() { return Date.replaceChars.longDays[this.getDay()]; },
    N: function() { return this.getDay() + 1; },
    S: function() { return (this.getDate() % 10 == 1 && this.getDate() != 11 ? 'st' : (this.getDate() % 10 == 2 && this.getDate() != 12 ? 'nd' : (this.getDate() % 10 == 3 && this.getDate() != 13 ? 'rd' : 'th'))); },
    w: function() { return this.getDay(); },
    z: function() { var d = new Date(this.getFullYear(),0,1); return Math.ceil((this - d) / 86400000); }, // Fixed now
    // Week
    W: function() { var d = new Date(this.getFullYear(), 0, 1); return Math.ceil((((this - d) / 86400000) + d.getDay() + 1) / 7); }, // Fixed now
    // Month
    F: function() { return Date.replaceChars.longMonths[this.getMonth()]; },
    m: function() { return (this.getMonth() < 9 ? '0' : '') + (this.getMonth() + 1); },
    M: function() { return Date.replaceChars.shortMonths[this.getMonth()]; },
    n: function() { return this.getMonth() + 1; },
    t: function() { var d = new Date(); return new Date(d.getFullYear(), d.getMonth(), 0).getDate() }, // Fixed now, gets #days of date
    // Year
    L: function() { var year = this.getFullYear(); return (year % 400 == 0 || (year % 100 != 0 && year % 4 == 0)); },   // Fixed now
    o: function() { var d  = new Date(this.valueOf());  d.setDate(d.getDate() - ((this.getDay() + 6) % 7) + 3); return d.getFullYear();}, //Fixed now
    Y: function() { return this.getFullYear(); },
    y: function() { return ('' + this.getFullYear()).substr(2); },
    // Time
    a: function() { return this.getHours() < 12 ? 'am' : 'pm'; },
    A: function() { return this.getHours() < 12 ? 'AM' : 'PM'; },
    B: function() { return Math.floor((((this.getUTCHours() + 1) % 24) + this.getUTCMinutes() / 60 + this.getUTCSeconds() / 3600) * 1000 / 24); }, // Fixed now
    g: function() { return this.getHours() % 12 || 12; },
    G: function() { return this.getHours(); },
    h: function() { return ((this.getHours() % 12 || 12) < 10 ? '0' : '') + (this.getHours() % 12 || 12); },
    H: function() { return (this.getHours() < 10 ? '0' : '') + this.getHours(); },
    i: function() { return (this.getMinutes() < 10 ? '0' : '') + this.getMinutes(); },
    s: function() { return (this.getSeconds() < 10 ? '0' : '') + this.getSeconds(); },
    u: function() { var m = this.getMilliseconds(); return (m < 10 ? '00' : (m < 100 ?
'0' : '')) + m; },
    // Timezone
    e: function() { return "Not Yet Supported"; },
    I: function() { return "Not Yet Supported"; },
    O: function() { return (-this.getTimezoneOffset() < 0 ? '-' : '+') + (Math.abs(this.getTimezoneOffset() / 60) < 10 ? '0' : '') + (Math.abs(this.getTimezoneOffset() / 60)) + '00'; },
    P: function() { return (-this.getTimezoneOffset() < 0 ? '-' : '+') + (Math.abs(this.getTimezoneOffset() / 60) < 10 ? '0' : '') + (Math.abs(this.getTimezoneOffset() / 60)) + ':00'; }, // Fixed now
    T: function() { var m = this.getMonth(); this.setMonth(0); var result = this.toTimeString().replace(/^.+ \(?([^\)]+)\)?$/, '$1'); this.setMonth(m); return result;},
    Z: function() { return -this.getTimezoneOffset() * 60; },
    // Full Date/Time
    c: function() { return this.format("Y-m-d\\TH:i:sP"); }, // Fixed now
    r: function() { return this.toString(); },
    U: function() { return this.getTime() / 1000; }
};

var myDate = new Date();
tmp['MSH']['MSH.7']['MSH.7.1'] = myDate.format('YmdHis');

Mirth runs under Java which in turn gets its timezone from the system it runs on. So you can change the timezone by updating the timezone on the server it runs on.

If that is not an option then dividius has provided good directions to change your timezone using Java classes.

You can edit the appropriate *.vmoptions file to include

-Duser.timezone=America/Chicago

For my system, we use the mcservice.vmoptions for this. To see your java time zone choices you can query java

java.util.TimeZone#getAvailableIDs() 

or you can look here: https://garygregory.wordpress.com/2013/06/18/what-are-the-java-timezone-ids/

Depending on where you are, you may need to avoid using CST or CDT because they are absolutes which will not flexibly convert around the transition to and from daylight savings time like America/Chicago will.

http://www.mirthproject.org/community/forums/showthread.php?t=4949