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

Answer 1

Here is another way to get GMT time in String format

String DATE_FORMAT = "EEE, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss z" ;
final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(DATE_FORMAT);
sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
String dateTimeString =  sdf.format(new Date());

Answer 2

this is my implementation:

public static String GetCurrentTimeStamp()
{
    Calendar cal=Calendar.getInstance();
    long offset = cal.getTimeZone().getOffset(System.currentTimeMillis());//if you want in UTC else remove it .
    return new java.sql.Timestamp(System.currentTimeMillis()+offset).toString();    
}

Answer 3

Just to make this simpler, to create a Date in UTC you can use Calendar :

Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

Which will construct a new instance for Calendar using the "UTC" TimeZone.

If you need a Date object from that calendar you could just use getTime().

Answer 4

This worked for me, returns the timestamp in GMT!

    Date currDate;
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormatGmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss");
    dateFormatGmt.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormatLocal = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss");

    long currTime = 0;
    try {

        currDate = dateFormatLocal.parse( dateFormatGmt.format(new Date()) );
        currTime = currDate.getTime();
    } catch (ParseException e) {
        // TODO Auto-generated catch block
        e.printStackTrace();
    }

Answer 5

If you're using joda time and want the current time in milliseconds without your local offset you can use this:

long instant = DateTimeZone.UTC.getMillisKeepLocal(DateTimeZone.getDefault(), System.currentTimeMillis());

Answer 6

SimpleDateFormat dateFormatGmt = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss");
dateFormatGmt.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));

//Local time zone   
SimpleDateFormat dateFormatLocal = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MMM-dd HH:mm:ss");

//Time in GMT
return dateFormatLocal.parse( dateFormatGmt.format(new Date()) );