App Engine Default Time & Date

The default time zone for the Java runtime on App Engine is UTC (frequently referred to as GMT). The following code will record the current time and date in UTC:

Date current_date = new Date();
String date = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("MM-dd-yyyy").format(current_date);
String time = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss aa").format(current_date);

For instance, date would be set to 09-21-2013 (September 21, 2013) and time would be set to 01:40:42 AM . If your application needs to record time in a different time zone, use the setTimeZone method of SimpleDateFormat .

Don’t forget to import the Date class:

import java.util.Date;