JodaTime - how to get current time in UTC

Question

I want to get the current time in UTC. What I do so far is following (just for testing purposes):

    DateTime dt = new DateTime();
    DateTimeZone tz = Dat         


        

Answer 1

Please try to listen to Jon Skeets good advise and comments. Here an additional explanation. Your edit-2 contains a mistake:

DateTimeZone tz = DateTimeZone.getDefault();
DateTime nowLocal = new DateTime();
LocalDateTime nowUTC = nowLocal.withZone(DateTimeZone.UTC).toLocalDateTime();
DateTime nowUTC2 = nowLocal.withZone(DateTimeZone.UTC);

Date dLocal = nowLocal.toDate();
Date dUTC = nowUTC.toDate();
Date dUTC2 = nowUTC2.toDate();

If you call toDate() on an object nowUTC of type LocalDateTime then you can get surprises - see javadoc. Joda-Time claims to use the same fields in java.util.Date as in nowUTC. What does this mean? Let's analyze:

nowUTC.toString() produces 2015-01-02T14:31:38.241 That is without timezone (note the missing Z at the end), so it is just a plain local timestamp. By context, we know it was generated in UTC. In your next step however, you convert it to a java.util.Date using the mentioned method above. This method combines the local timestamp with the system timezone (Belgrade) PRESERVING the FIELDS, hence CHANGING the instant. So you have finally miscorrected your instant. And your second line is wrong.

If you just want

utc date displays 14 o'clock

then don't use the questionable and misleading conversion method Joda-Time offers. Use instead a dedicated formatter with the pattern "EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss zzz yyyy" or similar (Joda-Time offers DateTimeFormatter). Set the UTC-offset on this formatter and print. Done. Abandon completely any call of java.util.Date.toString(). This way, you don't even need to do any dangerous conversion at all.