Date time parsing in Java

Question

Given this code...

 String date = "11:00 AM";

 SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("h:mm a");

 sdf.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("US/Eastern")); // --> should be GMT-4

 TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));

 Date parse = sdf.parse(date); // -- gives Thu Jan 01 16:00:00 GMT 1970

Why does date parsing give me 16:00 and not 15:00?

Answer 1

You cannot use java.util.Date to store time only. It will assign the 1970 year, which in some cases is incorrect. I would recommend to use org.joda.time.LocalTime for it.