@JsonFormat converts Date with incorrect timezone

Question

I have a simple POJO with a Date field with initial value coming in:

1985-09-17T01:00:00.000+0400

then this Date value gets mapped to a DTO with the Date field annotated:

@JsonFormat(shape = JsonFormat.Shape.STRING, pattern = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssX")
private Date dateOfBirth;

Then the result is shown:

1985-09-16T21:00:00Z

I have tried setting the timestamp property in @JsonFormat, but that didn't help and the date is still invalid.

How can I correctly convert the date?

Answer 1

The value within a java.util.Date is the number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch, which occurred at midnight January 1st 1970, UTC. As it's a number of milliseconds since a fixed epoch, the value within java.util.Date is the same around the world at any particular instant, regardless of local time zone.

So in your case it's better to use ZonedDateTime class if you use java 8 ZonedDateTime