How can I get the current UTC time online in Android?

Question

I am using the UTC timezone and the time in my application to get data. In the application, wherever the user can get the UTC time and used for getting the data. I used this method to get the UTC time.

String format = "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss";
final SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(format);
sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
String utcTime = sdf.format(new Date());

The application is working fine. But it is converting the system time to UTC time. The problem is that sometimes the user can change the time to the wrong time. So the data is not coming.

Case for the above issue is:

For example the current date time in India is Thursday, 26 July 2012, 14:27:56, time zone Kolkata. Then the time, Pacific time zone, should be Thursday, 26 July 2012, 01:59:30 PDT.

But the user changed his device time from 14:27:56 to 13:27:56, so the converted UTC time will be Thursday, 26 July 2012, 00:59:30 PDT. At this point my app is not able to get the date because of the one-hour difference.

I don't want to use date, Calendar classes for Java and I don't want to use the device time. How can I get the UTC time directly, without involving the device's time, date. Is there any open-source API for that?

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

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);