GregorianCalendar is 8 hours too late

[verduka fox]

I need to convert a UTC date to this format "MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss". I have written the following algorithm to convert the date to a GregorianCalendar. I can then use the SimpleDateFormat to format the date as above. However, the time of the date is eight hours past when it should be. For example, "127317817092943762" converts to "06/15/2004 17:1:49" when it should convert to "06/15/2002 09:01". I added a line to set the TimeZone to Central Time Zone since we are in the midwest; however, this didn't impact the result. Any ideas?

   public String translateDate(String s)
   {
      //Remove last 7 characters
      int shortenedLength = s.length() - 7;
      String ss = s.substring(0,shortenedLength);
      // ss has last 7 characters removed
      // Subtract off 11644473600
      // convert ss to long so can perform subtraction
      long l = Long.valueOf(ss).longValue();
      long subtractValue = Long.valueOf("11644473600").longValue();
      // result is the result of ss - 11644473600
      long result = l - subtractValue;
      // convert result from long to int so can add it to date below
      int resultI = new Long(result).intValue();
      // result is number of seconds since January 1, 1970
      // create a gc dated for 1/1/1970 at midnight
      GregorianCalendar gc = new GregorianCalendar(1970, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0);
      TimeZone tz = TimeZone.getTimeZone("America/Chicago");
      gc.setTimeZone(tz);
      // now add the number of seconds to this date to get the new date
      gc.add(Calendar.SECOND, resultI);
      SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss");
      return sdf.format(gc.getTime());
   }

[ June 21, 2004: Message edited by: verduka fox ]

[Mag Hoehme]

Hi Verduka,

check the following URL: http://www.theserverside.net/discussions/thread.tss?thread_id=25524 on parsing a UTC date!

Hope this helps!

[verduka fox]

Thanks for the reply.

Perhaps the original date is not in UTC format. I need to translate "127310819640982810" to "06/07/2004 06:39". When I try to do so using the algorithm above, it is several hours off. Do you have another suggestion?