title: how to get the number of seconds passed since 1970 for a date value?
body: <p>I have to an android application in which I need to convert the current date to the number of seconds passed <strong>since 1970</strong>.</p>
  
  <p>What I am doing currently is this.</p>
  
  <pre><code>Calendar cal = new GregorianCalendar(TimeZone.getTimeZone("GMT"));
  cal.set(currentDate.get(Calendar.YEAR), month, currentDate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH), 0, 0, 0);
  long timesince1970 = cal.getTime().getTime();
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>Another problem is that my application needs to run in Germany. Hence the need to convert the time <strong>to their time zone</strong> and then convert it to the number of seconds since 1970. </p>
  
  <p>The above is not giving me correct results.</p>