Spring @DateTimeFormat is changing timezone while converting @PathVariable to Date

Question

I'm trying to use spring's automatic String to Date conversion when getting date as @PathVariable using @DateTimeFormat. The automatic conversion is done, but for some reason the date is converted to the date I passed minus four hours (Easter Daylight Time, where the server and client are both located).

Example:

URL: .../something/04-10-2016/somename Will result someDate object with value 2016/10/03 20:00:00 (i.e. 8 PM of the previous day, which is 4 hours behind the date I passed.)

How do I avoid this auto timezone conversion. I don't need any timezone information, and this conversion is breaking the behavior I expected.

Here's my code:

@RequestMapping(value = "/something/{someDate}/{name}", method = RequestMethod.GET, headers = "Accept=application/json")
@ResponseBody
public SomeObject getDetails(@PathVariable @DateTimeFormat(pattern = "dd-MM-yyyy") Date someDate,
    @PathVariable String name) {
    // date here comes as GMT - 4
    // more code here
    // return someObject;
}

For I now, I'm working around this by just reading the path variable as a String and using SimpleDateFormatter to convert the String to Date manually.

Any idea on how I can get the auto conversion work without timezone conversion?

Answer 1

Cause of issue is probably the timezone, java.util.Date instant time is converted back into Eastern Time zone hence you see the value. If you are using Java 8, LocalDate should solve the problem for you.

@PathVariable @DateTimeFormat(pattern = "dd-MM-yyyy") LocalDate date

Following post some options for you neatly

https://www.petrikainulainen.net/programming/spring-framework/spring-from-the-trenches-parsing-date-and-time-information-from-a-request-parameter/

Answer 2

Do Nhu Vy's answer pointed in the right direction; but instead of adding the timezone information, I had to remove it.

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

Removed this from the config and left the default timezone alone. This worked for me.