How to make Date locale-independent?

I have a db, that stores dates in OleDateTime format, in GMT timezone. I've implemented a class, extending Date in jav开发者_如何学Pythona to represent that in classic date format. But my class is locale-dependent (I'm in GMT+2). Therefore, it converts the date in the db as date - 2 hours. How do I make it convert the date correctly? I want my class to be locale-independent, always using GMT timezone. Actually, the question is:

class MyOleDateTime extends Date {

    static {
        Locale.setDefault(WhatGoesHere?)
    }

    // ... some constructors
    // ... some methods
}

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Well, it's better to use the Calendar object like suggested in other answers. However, if you really want to set global timezone, you can use TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC")); early in your application code. There is also user.timezone Java system property.

Also (just fun to know), it appears that the only country actually living by GMT/UTC time (without daylight saving changes) is Liberia.

In fact, Date objects per se are always locale- and timezone-independent. Its getTime() method will always return the number of milliseconds passed since January 1, 1970 00:00:00 (not counting leap seconds) in UTC. But if you want to get something else than milliseconds, you have to use Calendar, which is timezone-dependent. But it is the right way to go. You don't use that deprecated methods in Date class, do you?

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As Michael Borgwardt has already said, the Java Date object does not know anything about timezones. It's just a wrapper for a number of milliseconds since 01-01-1970 00:00:00 UTC.

You start dealing with timezones only when you for example convert the Date object to a String using a DateFormat. You set the timezone on the DateFormat to specify in which timezone you want to see the Date.

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss Z");
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));

String text = df.format(date);  // text will contain date represented in UTC

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A Date is locale-independent, always using GMT timezone. It's just a wrapper around a millisecond timestamp in GMT (more correctly: UTC).

The only things in Date that are timezone dependant are the deprecated methods like getDay() - that's why they're deprecated. Those use the default time zone. The correct thing to do is to avoid using those deprecated methods - not to set the default timezone to UTC! That could cause problems elsewhere, and you can't prevent other parts of the code from setting the default timezone to something else.

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Use a Calendar object:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"),
                                    locale);

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Here's a snippet I used to calculate the GMT offset from the Calendar instance and format it. I appreciate all the help I've gotten from this site, its nice to contribute. I hope this helps someone somewhere. Enjoy.

Calendar calInst = Calendar.getInstance();

//calculate the offset to keep calendar instance GMT
int gmtOffsetMilli = calInst.get(Calendar.ZONE_OFFSET);
long gmtOffsetHr = TimeUnit.HOURS.convert(gmtOffsetMilli, TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);

calInst = Calendar.getInstance(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT " + gmtOffsetHr));