Repository navigation
Configurable default timezone #719
Description
Activity
Can you use
TimeZone.setDefault, or start your JVM with-Duser.timezone=?Can you use
TimeZone.setDefault, or start your JVM with-Duser.timezone=?That is a terrible "solution", it applies JVM-wide, isn't thread-safe and doesn't allow dealing with more than one timezone at a time.
IMO
TimeZoneandLocaleshould have been part of the mythical "context object" that could be passed around to methods that need it.Reacted by Sebastian Davids and Drew NoakesAgree completely, but that context object doesn't exist yet and the original question asked for something at the process level.
Reacted by NadaharWould it be possible to extend the API so that we have an alternative way of extracting dates, using something better than ancient java.util.Date objects?
java.util.Date is both inappropriate for "known date-time-components in unknown timezone" like here, since it just wraps a unix timestamp, but it also loses timezone information when it is present...
And I mention this here because if API needs changing (to be configurable), maybe this is a better change. It would allow us to know that the answer has unknown timezone and it would be up to us to assume anything we want about it.
[edit] but please don't delay with some solution because at this point I just cannot use the latest version if I require same answer regardless of environment. I can't even subtract the offset back to UTC myself because I don't know if the system default was applied or not.
#651
This change is beneficial depending on the use case.
In a different scenario, this may not be advisable. For example, if an application has two nodes in different geographical locations:
Server A in location L in timezone X
Server B in location M in timezone Y
The date may be parsed differently depending on the server.
It would be beneficial to specify the timezone to be used. This could be done via a Java system property, environment variable, explicit parameter in the API or a configuration context object.