Localize time in Android

Question

I am working on an Android application. User can send post and can see each other's post, pretty much like Twitter. Here's a issue with the time.

When server serialized timestamp from DB and send as response, it responses a String like this: 2011-09-01 13:20:30+00:00" Where I think the +00:00 part is UTC offset .

I was wondering what's a good approach to parse this string to some time object in local time zone? so I can show it correctly on UI?

Thanks!

Answer 1

您可以将其解析为日期对象，然后根据用户的区域设置使用SimpleDateFormatter对其进行格式化。

Answer 2

SimpleDateFormat has the capability of capturing your offset independently in a meaningful way. You want to translate the offset to a zone without explicitly specifying it to the parser instance.

Using SimpleDateFormat

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssXXX");
try {
    System.out.println(sdf.parse(date));
} catch (ParseException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

Gives,

Thu Sep 01 18:50:30 IST 2011

joda time library provides for an alternative resolution.

DateTimeFormatter is capable of parsing the format with Z added to the pattern and the parsed date is in the users default timezone .

DateTimeFormatter parser = DateTimeFormat.forPattern("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ssZ");
String date = "2011-09-01 13:20:30+00:00";

System.out.println(parser.parseDateTime(date));
System.out.println(parser.parseDateTime(date).toDate());

Gives,

2011-09-01T18:50:30.000+05:30
Thu Sep 01 18:50:30 IST 2011

You can pick any of the date formats above, modify it, further process it and use as part of your application.