1. Overview
Sometimes, when we’re storing dates in MySQL, we realize that the date from the database is different from our system or JVM.
Other times, we just need to run our app with another timezone.
In this tutorial, we’re going to see different ways to change the timezone of MySQL using Spring Boot configuration.
2. Timezone as a URL Param
One way we can specify the timezone is in the connection URL string as a parameter.
In order to select our timezone, we have to add the connectionTimeZone property to specify the timezone:
spring:
datasource:
url: jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/test?connectionTimeZone=UTC
username: root
password:
Also, we can, of course, configure the datasource with Java configuration instead.
We can find more information about this property and others in the MySQL official documentation.
3. Spring Boot Property
Or, instead of indicating the timezone via the connectionTimeZone URL parameter, we can specify the time_zone property in our Spring Boot configuration:
spring.jpa.properties.hibernate.jdbc.time_zone=UTC
Or with YAML:
spring:
jpa:
properties:
hibernate:
jdbc:
time_zone: UTC
4. JVM Default Timezone
And of course, we can update the default timezone that Java has.
In order to select our timezone, we have to add the property forceConnectionTimeZoneToSession=true in the URL. And then we just need to add a simple method:
@PostConstruct
void started() {
TimeZone.setDefault(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
}
But, this solution could generate other problems since it’s application-wide. Perhaps other parts of the applications need another timezone. For example, we may need to connect to different databases and they, for some reason, need dates to be stored in different timezones.
5. Conclusion
In this tutorial, we saw a few different ways to configure the MySQL JDBC timezone in Spring. We did it with a URL param, with a property, and by changing the JVM default timezone.
As always, the full set of examples is over on GitHub.
