Android Format date with time zone

Question

I need to format the date into a specific string.

I used SimpleDateFormat class to format the date using the pattern \"yyyy-MM-dd\'T\'HH:m

Answer 1

What you can do is just add the ":" manually using substring(). I have faced this earlier and this solution works.

Answer 2

You can use Joda Time instead. Its DateTimeFormat has a ZZ format attribute which does what you want.

Link

Big advantage: unlike SimpleDateFormat, DateTimeFormatter is thread safe. Usage:

DateTimeFormatter fmt = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZ")
    .withLocale(Locale.ENGLISH);

Answer 3

Simply refactor this code and replace the 'Locale.getDefault()' with the Locale you need

private SimpleDateFormat getDateFormat() {
    SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = (SimpleDateFormat) SimpleDateFormat.getDateTimeInstance(SimpleDateFormat.SHORT, SimpleDateFormat.DEFAULT, Locale.getDefault());
    String pattern = dateFormat.toLocalizedPattern();
    pattern = pattern.trim();
    dateFormat.applyLocalizedPattern(pattern);
    return dateFormat;
}

//And here is the usage

SimpleDateFormat sdf = getDateFormat();

sdf.format(new Date());

Answer 4

Why not just do it manually with regexp?

String oldDate = "2013-01-04T15:51:45+0530";
String newDate = oldDate.replaceAll("(\\+\\d\\d)(\\d\\d)", "$1:$2");

Same result, with substring (if performance is an issue).

String oldDate = "2013-01-04T15:51:45+0530";
int length = oldDate.length();
String newDate = oldDate.substring(0, length - 2) + ':' + oldDate.substring(length - 2);

Answer 5

If you want the date for a different timeZone (which the title suggests)

  val nowMillsUTC = System.currentTimeMillis()

  val timeZoneID = "Australia/Perth"
  val tz = TimeZone.getTimeZone(timeZoneID)

  val simpleDateFormat = SimpleDateFormat("HH.mm  dd.MMM.yyyy", Locale.getDefault())
  simpleDateFormat.setTimeZone(tz)
  val resultTxt = simpleDateFormat.format(nowMillsUTC)

  print(timeZoneID + " -> " + resultTxt)
  //   Australia/Perth -> 19.59  21.Mar.2019

Answer 6

You can also use "ZZZZZ" instead of "Z" in your pattern (according to documentation). Something like this

    Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
    SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZZZZZ", Locale.ENGLISH);      
    Log.e(C.TAG, "formatted string: "+sdf.format(c.getTime()));