[PDFBOX-2420] DateConverter doesn't handle time zones outside -12 to +12 range properly

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 2.0.0, 2.0.2, 2.0.3, 3.0.0 PDFBox
• Fix Version/s: 1.8.13, 2.0.3, 3.0.0 PDFBox
• Component/s: Utilities
• Assignee: Tilman Hausherr
• Reporter: Arjohn Kampman
• Created: 09/Oct/14 11:55
• Updated: 25/Mar/17 18:12
• Resolved: 11/Aug/16 16:47

Description

DateConverter normalizes time zones in restrainTZoffset(...) to a value that is between -12:00 and +12:00. So a time zone like +13:00 gets normalized to -11:00. However, the date itself is not adapted accordingly. As a result, a time stamp like "2014-7-20T05:0:00+1300" gets changed to "2014-7-20T05:0:00-1100", which is actually 24 hours later! To compensate for the time zone change, 24 hours should have been subtracted from the date: "2014-7-19T05:0:00-1100".

Personally, I'd prefer to leave the time zones untouched completely. Note that XML Schema defines time zones up to +/- 14:00 to be valid: http://www.w3.org/TR/xmlschema-2/#dateTime-timezones. For any time zones out of that range either generate an error or consider a garbage-in-garbage-out policy.

Issue Links

• is related to: PDFBOX-3315 Dates falsely detected as different by preflight
• links to: pull request "I think, method restrainTZoffset should be removed"