[java] datetime datatype in java

Which data type can I use in Java to hold the current date as well as time?. I want to store the datetime in a db as well as having a field in the java bean to hold that.

is it java.util.Date ?

You can use Calendar.

     Calendar rightNow = Calendar.getInstance();

Calendar

Date4j alternative to Date, Calendar, and related Java classes

Since Java 8, it seems like the java.time standard library is the way to go. From Joda time web page:

Note that from Java SE 8 onwards, users are asked to migrate to java.time (JSR-310) - a core part of the JDK which replaces this project.

Back to your question. Were you to use Java 8, I think you want LocalDateTime. Because it contains the date and time-of-the-day, but is unaware of time zone or any reference point in time such as the unix epoch.

java.time

The java.time framework built into Java 8 and later supplants both the old date-time classes bundled with the earliest versions of Java and the Joda-Time library. The java.time classes have been back-ported to Java 6 & 7 and to Android.

The Instant class represents a moment on the timeline in UTC with a resolution of nanoseconds.

Instant instant = Instant.now();

Apply an offset-from-UTC (a number of hours and possible minutes and seconds) to get an OffsetDateTime.

ZoneOffset offset = ZoneOffset.of( "-04:00" );
OffsetDateTime odt = OffsetDateTime.ofInstant( instant , offset );

Better yet is applying a full time zone which is an offset plus a set of rules for handling anomalies such as Daylight Saving Time (DST).

ZoneId zoneId = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.ofInstant( instant , zoneId );

Database

Hopefully the JDBC drivers will be updated to work directly with the java.time classes. Until then we must use the java.sql classes to move date-time values to/from the database. But limit your use of the java.sql classes to the chore of database transit. Do not use them for business logic. As part of the old date-time classes they are poorly designed, confusing, and troublesome.

Use new methods added to the old classes to convert to/from java.time. Look for to… and valueOf methods.

Use the java.sql.Timestamp class for date-time values.

java.sql.Timestamp ts = java.sql.Timestamp.valueOf( instant );

And going the other direction…

Instant instant = ts.toInstant();

For date-time data you virtually always want the TIMESTAMP WITH TIME ZONE data type rather than WITHOUT when designing your table columns in your database.

java.util.Date represents an instant in time, with no reference to a particular time zone or calendar system. It does hold both date and time though - it's basically a number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch.

Alternatively you can use java.util.Calendar which does know about both of those things.

Personally I would strongly recommend you use Joda Time which is a much richer date/time API. It allows you to express your data much more clearly, with types for "just dates", "just local times", "local date/time", "instant", "date/time with time zone" etc. Most of the types are also immutable, which is a huge benefit in terms of code clarity.

I used this import:

import java.util.Date;

And declared my variable like this:

Date studentEnrollementDate;

+1 the recommendation for Joda-time. If you plan on doing anything more than a simple Hello World example, I suggest reading this:

Daylight saving time and time zone best practices

import java.util.Date;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

private String getDateTime() {
    DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");
    Date date = new Date();
    return dateFormat.format(date);
}

Depends on the RDBMS or even the JDBC driver.

Most of the times you can use java.sql.Timestamp most of the times along with a prepared statement:

pstmt.setTimestamp( index, new Timestamp( yourJavaUtilDateInstance.getTime() );