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A DateTime object represents a specific instant of time. It must be a Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) or the time zone must be indicated by the offset to UTC. In other words, the time must be unique in all time zones around the world.

The XJDF DateTime object provides different constructors for initializing. The default constructor creates the current date as XJDF DateTime object whereas the custom constructors initialize the object by a custom value.

// current time
DateTime d1 = new DateTime();
System.out.println(d1.toString()); // 2013-02-24T18:34:01+01:0001Z

// specify date only
DateTime d2 = new DateTime(2013, 02, 24);
System.out.println(d2.toString()); // 2013-02-24T2324T00:59:00+01:0000Z

// specify date and time
DateTime d3 = new DateTime(2013, 02, 24, 15, 30);
System.out.println(d3.toString()); // 2013-02-24T15:30:00+01:0000Z

// specify date as string
DateTime d4 = new DateTime("2013-02-24T18:30:00+00:0000Z");
System.out.println(d4.toString()); // 2013-02-24T18:30:00Z

// initialize DateTime from CalendarDate
DateTime d5 = new DateTime(new GregorianCalendarDate());
System.out.println(d5.toString()); // 2013-02-24T18:42:46+01:00:46Z

Creating instances of DateTime with time zone offset works at the moment but should be avoided.

The preferred date pattern is yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'

Internally the XJDF DateTime object holds the information as Calendar. This object can also be accessed using the Getter-Method.

Note: The getCalendar() returns a exact copy of the Calendar used in DateTime. This prevents users from (accidently) changing the actual date.

// read DateTime
DateTime dateTime = new DateTime();
dateTime.getCalendar()

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