Getting today's date in GMT time zone

Question

Hi,
I have a simple question, but am confused how to do it:
I need the current GMT date (as a Date object) ..how do I do it?
Date date = new Date();
This returns the current date but according to the timezone of the system time & not GMT.
Using SimpleDateFormat comes close but it returns as a String object:
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("some format");
dateFormat.setTimeZone(new SimpleTimeZone(0, "GMT"));
Date date = new Date();
String dateAsString = dateFormat.format(date);
This gets the current GMT date but as a String object, but I want it as a Date object.
Can you please throw some light on this? I guess there should be simple way to do it or am overlooking something.
Thanks!

Answer 1

I don't think Calendar is useful here.
"Current date as GMT" is meaningless. Current date (and time) is just "now." Timezone is not part of the picture. If you want to present the current date/time in GMT, then....
Date date = new Date();
DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm z");
System.out.println(df.format(date));
df.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
System.out.println(df.format(date));
2007-06-04 02:29 PDT
2007-06-04 09:29 GMT