Formatting date object using TimeZone

[Nikes Shah]

Hi all,

I want to format date in following format:

2010-06-28T19:21:05.005+05:30

I am using following code:

 
SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.sssZ");
Date newDate = new Date();
String strDate = formatter.format(newDate);  

above code produces date in following form

2010-06-28T19:21:05.005+0530

i.e. without colon for time zone.

my application requires time zone with the colon (+05:30), whereas above code produces
timezone without colon.

Can some one help me what modifications can I perform for timezone with colon?

Thanks.
Nikesh

[Michael Angstadt]

Looking at the javadocs for SimpleDateFormat, I'm not sure if it's possible. 'Z' and 'z' are close to what you need, but not perfect. You might have to do some manual string manipulation to add the colon.

[Nikes Shah]

Thanks Michael,

It seems manually i will have to add colon for time zone.

[Jesper de Jong]

The format you're asking for looks like ISO 8601, which is what's used in XML files as the standard format for timestamps.

Unfortunately, SimpleDateFormat does not have proper support for this, and it's indeed not possible to use SimpleDateFormat to produce a string in the form that you want. One solution is to add the colon by hand.

You could have a look at Joda Time, a popular open source library for dealing with dates and times in Java, which does have proper support for ISO 8601.

[Nikes Shah]

Yes, I am dealing with web services which requires timezone in ISO 8601.

Thanks for the Joda Time library link.