Re: capturing timezone when parsing java.util.Date

From:

=?ISO-8859-1?Q?Arne_Vajh=F8j?= <arne@vajhoej.dk>

Newsgroups:

comp.lang.java.programmer

Date:

Tue, 30 Jun 2009 21:23:37 -0400

Message-ID:

<4a4aba95$0$48237$14726298@news.sunsite.dk>

Michal Kleczek wrote:

Patricia Shanahan wrote:

Even after reading the Javadocs, as well as this discussion, I still
don't know how to deal with the following use-case: Record a date in a
format that allows for time comparisons and adjustments, but display it
appropriately for the original time zone.

Assuming there is original timezone encoded in date/time string:

public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {

  final DateFormat dateFormat =
    new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss z");
  dateFormat.parse("2009-06-26 14:13:00 CET");
  System.out.println(dateFormat.getTimeZone().getDisplayName());
  dateFormat.parse("2009-06-26 14:13:00 EST");
  System.out.println(dateFormat.getTimeZone().getDisplayName());

}

Prints:
Central European Time
Eastern Standard Time

Very interesting.

I don't like it. It is very bad in my opinion that the parse method
as a side effect changes the Calendar/TimeZone of the DateFormat.

It is not very obvious from the docs either. I wonder whether it is
really a Java feature or an implementation feature.

Arne