JodaTime doesn't recognize some Android timezones

Question

I'm using JodaTime in my app and I'm getting reports from the developer console about crashes like this one:

java.lang.RuntimeException: Unable to resume activity {com.myapp.app/Home}: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The datetime zone id 'Africa/Abuja' is not recognised
....
Caused by: java.lang.IllegalArgumentException: The datetime zone id 'Africa/Abuja' is not recognised
at org.joda.time.DateTimeZone.forTimeZone(DateTimeZone.java:337)
...

I'm using this line of code to get the Timezone:

DateTimeZone tz = DateTimeZone.forTimeZone(TimeZone.getDefault());

Interestingly, most of the crashes are Africa/****.

TimeZone.getDefault() is part of the Android API, so I assumed that it would return usable timezone IDs.

Is there anything I can do with these timezones to be able to use them properly? Is this a known problem with Android and Joda Time?

Answer 1

Use this Joda version adapted for Android: https://github.com/dlew/joda-time-android

Then, run JodaTimeAndroid.init(this); in your Application's onCreate (it's in their documentation), and voilà, it just works, all timezones are recognized.

Answer 2

The zone "Africa/Abuja" is not a valid time zone identifier in IANA-tz-database using Olson identifiers (named after inventor Arthur David Olson). Instead the valid zone identifier is in this case "Africa/Lagos".

You should also note that JodaTime follows IANA (look for the youngest version there, too) and that Android has a different home-grown tz-database which might use different time zone identifiers. According to this android-api-link Android supports Olson-tz-identifiers. I am not quite sure why you use "Africa/Abuja" at all resp. why this shall be valid. Is it contained in TimeZone.getAvailableIDs()?

If anything strange in Android configuration causes TimeZone.getDefault() using "Africa/Abuja" then you could try to set the system property "user.timezone" to "Africa/Lagos". JodaTime will first look at this property.