Converting timezone

[Srikanth Madasu]

I have a requirement of converting times in different time zones to PST.

example if I give "03:30 AM CST" my method should return time in PST.

        //input is of format - "03:30 AM CST"
	private static String convert(String time){
		String hour = time.substring(0,2);
		String minutes = time.substring(3,5);
		String ampm = time.substring(6,8);
		String zone = time.substring(9,12);
		
		//construct calendar obj
		Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
		c.set(Calendar.HOUR, Integer.parseInt(hour));
		c.set(Calendar.MINUTE, Integer.parseInt(minutes));
		c.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
		c.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
		c.set(Calendar.AM_PM, ampm.equalsIgnoreCase("AM") ? Calendar.AM : Calendar.PM);
		c.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone(zone));
		

                //determine offset
		int offset = -100;
		if(zone.equalsIgnoreCase("EST")) offset =  -3;
		else if(zone.equalsIgnoreCase("CST")) offset =  -2;
		else if(zone.equalsIgnoreCase("MST")) offset = -1;
		else if(zone.equalsIgnoreCase("PST")) offset = 0;
		else if(zone.equalsIgnoreCase("AST")) offset = 1;
		else if(zone.equalsIgnoreCase("HST")) offset = 2;
		

                //Get time in PST
		DateFormat d = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm a");
		System.out.println(d.format(c));
		c.add(Calendar.HOUR, offset);
		d.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("PST"));
		System.out.println(d.format(c));

but its throwing following error:

Exception in thread "main" java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: Cannot format given Object as a Date

Can some one tel me what is mistake? and is htere a better/elegant way of doing this?

Thanks in advance!

[fred rosenberger]

What line is the error from?

[Wouter Oet]

On which line do you get the exception?

You can use DateFormat/SimpleDateFormat to parse a String to a Date.

[Srikanth Madasu]

Error is on line 30 where I format the obj...

d.format(c);

[Wouter Oet]

You can't use DateFormat.format() with a Calender instance. You need to use:

d.format(c.getTime())

[Srikanth Madasu]

That worked.. Thanks much!