Getting Arizona time with getTime()

Question

date= Calendar.getInstance();
Date currentDate = date.getTime();
String sDate = currentDate.toString();

This returns time EST. I need to change it to Arizona time which is tricky because Arizona does not have daylight savings time. Is there a short cut to making the changes or do I need to query a calendar to subtract two hours when Arizona is on MST and three hours when PST.

Answer 1

This returns time EST.

Well, Date.toString() will, if you're in EST at the moment. It's not part of the data stored within the Date - that's just an instant in time, with no idea what time zone or calendar system it might have started off in.

Your first two lines would be more simply written as:

Date currentDate = new Date();

You should use a DateFormat to convert the Date into a String. You can specify the time zone you want to use there. Do not start performing any arithmetic on the date yourself to add/remove offsets - that's a sign that you're heading in the wrong direction.