Java Date to UTC using gson

Question

I can\'t seem to get gson to convert a Date to UTC time in java.... Here is my code...

Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().setDateFormat(\"yyyy-MM-dd\'T\'HH:mm:ss.         


        

Answer 1

The solution that worked for me for this issue was to create a custom Date adapter (P.S be carefull so that you import java.util.Date not java.sql.Date!)

public class ColonCompatibileDateTypeAdapter implements JsonSerializer, JsonDeserializer< Date> {
private final DateFormat dateFormat;

public ColonCompatibileDateTypeAdapter() {
  dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ") {
        @Override
        public StringBuffer format(Date date, StringBuffer toAppendTo, FieldPosition pos) {
            StringBuffer rfcFormat = super.format(date, toAppendTo, pos);
            return rfcFormat.insert(rfcFormat.length() - 2, ":");
        }

        @Override
        public Date parse(String text, ParsePosition pos) {
            if (text.length() > 3) {
                text = text.substring(0, text.length() - 3) + text.substring(text.length() - 2);
            }
            return super.parse(text, pos);
        }
    };


}

@Override public synchronized JsonElement serialize(Date date, Type type,
    JsonSerializationContext jsonSerializationContext) {
  return new JsonPrimitive(dateFormat.format(date));
}

@Override public synchronized Date deserialize(JsonElement jsonElement, Type type,
    JsonDeserializationContext jsonDeserializationContext) {
  try {
      return dateFormat.parse(jsonElement.getAsString());
  } catch (ParseException e) {
    throw new JsonParseException(e);
  }
}}

and then use it while creating GSON object

Gson gson = new GsonBuilder().registerTypeAdapter(Date.class, new ColonCompatibileDateTypeAdapter()).create();