Java set timezone at runtime

Question

I am working on a desktop application. It would get input as a text file from user having contents like this :

..................................   
..................................

Mon Jul  9 14:41:07 MDT 2012
..................................
..................................
..................................

I am using this information and creating a timeseries chart using jfreechart library. Timezone could be anything available in the world. But when I use this file its default timezone is sytem's timezone(IST) so doesn't show MDT time. When I tried to capture timezone from date and then used

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

It didn't work. How can I change the default timezone in Java when I am having abbreviation for timezone like MDT, CDT etc?

Answer 1

MDT is not the timezone key, it is the short display name of the timezone, so TimeZone.getTimeZone("MDT") would return default time zone which is GMT. The keys for Mountain Time are MST,MST7MDT etc. So, you need to identify the key of the timezone. Please note there are many different keys for the same short display name e.g. for MDT shortName there are keys with US/Mountain, US/Arizona, SystemV/MST7MDT, Navajo, Mexico/BajaSur, MST7MDT and MST.

Answer 2

Theres no timezone called MDT, it is MST7MDT. Use:

TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("MST7MDT"));

Also see Java's java.util.TimeZone