Get UTC date from Web in android application

Question

I want a UTC date for my android application which is device (and User) independent. I have heard some thing like getting date from NTP server but cannot find any help from google or SO. So can anyone help me with some code snippets or links. Thanks in advance.

NOTE: I dont want UTC Date Format (like DateFormat.getTimeInstance();), but UTC time, which user cannot change.

Answer 1

Google found a network time retriever for us, SntpClient. See if it works, but it's even documented! :-O

It returns a long.

Answer 2

UTC Time over SntpClient above don't work if the the Sytem time changed e.g. manually for 8 hours. Because it using System.currentTimeMillis wich returns the false value!!!

        // get current time and write it to the request packet
        long requestTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
        long requestTicks = SystemClock.elapsedRealtime();

Better use this Class to get the right UTC Time from NTP Server:

import java.net.DatagramPacket;
import java.net.DatagramSocket;
import java.net.InetAddress;


class NTP_UTC_Time
{
private static final String TAG = "SntpClient";

private static final int RECEIVE_TIME_OFFSET = 32;
private static final int TRANSMIT_TIME_OFFSET = 40;
private static final int NTP_PACKET_SIZE = 48;

private static final int NTP_PORT = 123;
private static final int NTP_MODE_CLIENT = 3;
private static final int NTP_VERSION = 3;

// Number of seconds between Jan 1, 1900 and Jan 1, 1970
// 70 years plus 17 leap days
private static final long OFFSET_1900_TO_1970 = ((365L * 70L) + 17L) * 24L * 60L * 60L;

private long mNtpTime;

public boolean requestTime(String host, int timeout) {
    try {
        DatagramSocket socket = new DatagramSocket();
        socket.setSoTimeout(timeout);
        InetAddress address = InetAddress.getByName(host);
        byte[] buffer = new byte[NTP_PACKET_SIZE];
        DatagramPacket request = new DatagramPacket(buffer, buffer.length, address, NTP_PORT);

        buffer[0] = NTP_MODE_CLIENT | (NTP_VERSION << 3);

        writeTimeStamp(buffer, TRANSMIT_TIME_OFFSET);

        socket.send(request);

        // read the response
        DatagramPacket response = new DatagramPacket(buffer, buffer.length);
        socket.receive(response);          
        socket.close();

        mNtpTime = readTimeStamp(buffer, RECEIVE_TIME_OFFSET);            
    } catch (Exception e) {
      //  if (Config.LOGD) Log.d(TAG, "request time failed: " + e);
        return false;
    }

    return true;
}


public long getNtpTime() {
    return mNtpTime;
}


/**
 * Reads an unsigned 32 bit big endian number from the given offset in the buffer.
 */
private long read32(byte[] buffer, int offset) {
    byte b0 = buffer[offset];
    byte b1 = buffer[offset+1];
    byte b2 = buffer[offset+2];
    byte b3 = buffer[offset+3];

    // convert signed bytes to unsigned values
    int i0 = ((b0 & 0x80) == 0x80 ? (b0 & 0x7F) + 0x80 : b0);
    int i1 = ((b1 & 0x80) == 0x80 ? (b1 & 0x7F) + 0x80 : b1);
    int i2 = ((b2 & 0x80) == 0x80 ? (b2 & 0x7F) + 0x80 : b2);
    int i3 = ((b3 & 0x80) == 0x80 ? (b3 & 0x7F) + 0x80 : b3);

    return ((long)i0 << 24) + ((long)i1 << 16) + ((long)i2 << 8) + (long)i3;
}

/**
 * Reads the NTP time stamp at the given offset in the buffer and returns 
 * it as a system time (milliseconds since January 1, 1970).
 */    
private long readTimeStamp(byte[] buffer, int offset) {
    long seconds = read32(buffer, offset);
    long fraction = read32(buffer, offset + 4);
    return ((seconds - OFFSET_1900_TO_1970) * 1000) + ((fraction * 1000L) / 0x100000000L);        
}

/**
 * Writes 0 as NTP starttime stamp in the buffer. --> Then NTP returns Time OFFSET since 1900
 */    
private void writeTimeStamp(byte[] buffer, int offset) {        
    int ofs =  offset++;

    for (int i=ofs;i<(ofs+8);i++)
      buffer[i] = (byte)(0);             
}

}

And use it with:

        long now = 0;

        NTP_UTC_Time client = new NTP_UTC_Time();

        if (client.requestTime("pool.ntp.org", 2000)) {              
          now = client.getNtpTime();
        }

If you need UTC Time "now" as DateTimeString use function:

private String get_UTC_Datetime_from_timestamp(long timeStamp){

    try{

        Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
        TimeZone tz = cal.getTimeZone();

        int tzt = tz.getOffset(System.currentTimeMillis());

        timeStamp -= tzt;

        // DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss",Locale.getDefault());
        DateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat();
        Date netDate = (new Date(timeStamp));
        return sdf.format(netDate);
    }
    catch(Exception ex){
        return "";
     }
    } 

and use it with:

String UTC_DateTime = get_UTC_Datetime_from_timestamp(now);