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

Answer 1

This definitely returns UTC time: as String and Date objects !

static final String DATE_FORMAT = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss";

public static Date getUTCdatetimeAsDate() {
    // note: doesn't check for null
    return stringDateToDate(getUTCdatetimeAsString());
}

public static String getUTCdatetimeAsString() {
    final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT);
    sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
    final String utcTime = sdf.format(new Date());

    return utcTime;
}

public static Date stringDateToDate(String StrDate) {
    Date dateToReturn = null;
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat(DATEFORMAT);

    try {
        dateToReturn = (Date)dateFormat.parse(StrDate);
    }
    catch (ParseException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

    return dateToReturn;
}