JDBC Timestamp & Date GMT issues

Question

I have a JDBC Date column, which if a i use getDate is get the \'date\' part only 02 Oct 2009 but if i use getTimestamp i get the full \'date\

Answer 1

You should be aware that java.util.Date (and also java.sql.Date and java.sql.Timestamp, which are subclasses of java.util.Date) don't know anything about timezones, or rather, they are always in UTC.

java.util.Date and its subclasses are nothing more than a container for a "number of milliseconds since 01-01-1970, 12:00 AM UTC" value.

To display a date in a specific timezone, convert it to a string by using a java.text.DateFormat object. Set the timezone on that object by calling the setTimeZone() method. For example:

Date date = ...;  // wherever you get this from

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss");

// Make the date format show the date in CET (central European time)
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("CET"));

String text = df.format(date);