Problem in converting the String to Date with time zone GMT

Question

Hi,
When I tried to convert the string 12/05/2009 to Date, the time zone is set to BST.On the other hand, for the date 12/12/2009, the time zone is set to GMT. What should I do to get the time zone as GMT all the time.?
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
String dateString = "12/05/2009";
System.out.println(myDate.toString());

Answer 1

I think you are all missing the point. java.util.Date objects always alway always store the date as the number of milliseconds since 1/1/1970 UTC so the only TimeZone they have its the implicit UTC. When you use the Date.toString() method the toString() method gets the default time zone from your environment and formats the data accordingly. This means that the same Date object will, by default, produce a different result for France and Australia and the US.
So, if you have the date "12/5/2009" as a String then to convert it to a java.util.Date you must specify what TimeZone is implied. If it is your system time zone then you can just create a SimpleDateFormat object with the correct format and then use the parse() method to create the java.util.Date object and this will automatically be converted to UTC. If the date String represents some other time zone then you must explicitly set the time zone of the SimpleDateFormat object before parsing the string.
The same approach applies when converting a java.util.Date object to a String. If you want anything other than your system time zone then you must explicitly tell the SimpleDateFormat what time zone you want the result formatted for.