How do i set date formats from one country to another?

Question

So i send a Date.toString() to an android phone, the server is in one country, how do i format the time so that it shown relative to the timezone of the phone?

For example, if the server sends 5 o clock CDT to the phone, the phone will then display 10 oclock utc ?

any ideas on how i should go about achieving this?

yes i have complete control, at the moment i only send the string, what would be the best way to send it , so it can be reconstructed client side? — molleman, Jul 30 '11 at 15:24

Sanjay T. Sharma · Answer 1 · 2011-07-30T15:29:36.123

1

If sending across a string is not an absolute requirement, an alternate solution would be to send the UTC milliseconds and re-construct the time based on the user timezone.

// on the sever side
final Date serverTime = new Date();
sendToClient(serverTime.getTime());
System.out.println("Time sent by server: " + serverTime);

// on the client
final long ms = receiveFromServer();
final Date clientTime = new Date();
clientTime.setTime(ms);
System.out.println("Time received by client: " + clientTime);

edited Jul 30 '11 at 15:29

answered Jul 30 '11 at 15:16

Sanjay T. Sharma

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how would i reconstruct this client side in java – molleman Jul 30 '11 at 15:25
Updated post, try it out. Also read this post: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2697549/how-to-make-date-locale-independent – Sanjay T. Sharma Jul 30 '11 at 15:29

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jul 30 '11 at 15:46

If you are able to send the UTC time in milliseconds, then take a look at DateUtils.formatDateTime(...) which will format and return a String using local conventions.

Use the DateUtils.FORMAT_XXX constants for the flags parameter to specify which components to include (weekday, year etc).

How do i set date formats from one country to another?

2 Answers2