How to get the current date time in Java

Question

What s the best way to get the current date time in Java

User · Answer

Use   String timeStamp   new SimpleDateFormat  yyyyMMdd HHmmss   format Calendar getInstance   getTime     System out println timeStamp       It s working

User · Answer

Have a look at the Date class  There s also the newer Calendar class which is the preferred method of doing many date   time operations  a lot of the methods on Date have been deprecated    If you just want the current date  then either create a new Date object or call Calendar getInstance

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It depends on what form of date   time you want   If you want the date   time as a single numeric value  then System currentTimeMillis   gives you that  expressed as the number of milliseconds after the UNIX epoch  as a Java long    This value is a delta from a UTC time-point  and is independent of the local time-zone1   If you want the date   time in a form that allows you to access the components  year  month  etc  numerically  you could use one of the following   new Date   gives you a Date object initialized with the current date   time   The problem is that the Date API methods are mostly flawed     and deprecated   Calendar getInstance   gives you a Calendar object initialized with the current date   time  using the default Locale and TimeZone   Other overloads allow you to use a specific Locale and or TimeZone   Calendar works     but the APIs are still cumbersome   new org joda time DateTime   gives you a Joda-time object initialized with the current date   time  using the default time zone and chronology   There are lots of other Joda alternatives     too many to describe here    But note that some people report that Joda time has performance issues   e g  https   stackoverflow com questions 6280829    in Java 8  calling java time LocalDateTime now   and java time ZonedDateTime now   will give you representations2 for the current date   time      Prior to Java 8  most people who know about these things recommended Joda-time as having  by far  the best Java APIs for doing things involving time point and duration calculations  With Java 8 and later  the standard java time package is recommended   Joda time is now considered  quot obsolete quot   and the Joda maintainers are recommending that people migrate 3   1 - System currentTimeMillis   gives the  quot system quot  time   While it is normal practice for the system clock to be set to  nominal  UTC  there will be a difference  a delta  between the local UTC clock and true UTC   The size of the delta depends on how well  and how often  the system s clock is synced with UTC  2 - Note that LocalDateTime doesn t include a time zone   As the javadoc says   quot It cannot represent an instant on the time-line without additional information such as an offset or time-zone  quot  3 - Note  your Java 8 code won t break if you don t migrate  but the Joda codebase may eventually stop getting bug fixes and other patches   As of 2020-02  an official  quot end of life quot  for Joda has not been announced  and the Joda APIs have not been marked as Deprecated

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Just create a Date object     import java util Date   Date date   new Date

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I created this methods  it works for me     public String GetDay         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   format DateTimeFormatter ofPattern  dd         public String GetNameOfTheDay         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   getDayOfWeek        public String GetMonth         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   format DateTimeFormatter ofPattern  MM         public String GetNameOfTheMonth         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   getMonth        public String GetYear         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   format DateTimeFormatter ofPattern  yyyy         public boolean isLeapYear long year        return Year isLeap year      public String GetDate         return GetDay           GetMonth           GetYear       public String Get12HHour         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   format DateTimeFormatter ofPattern  hh         public String Get24HHour         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   getHour        public String GetMinutes         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   format DateTimeFormatter ofPattern  mm         public String GetSeconds         return String valueOf LocalDateTime now   format DateTimeFormatter ofPattern  ss         public String Get24HTime         return Get24HHour           GetMinutes       public String Get24HFullTime         return Get24HHour           GetMinutes           GetSeconds       public String Get12HTime         return Get12HHour           GetMinutes       public String Get12HFullTime         return Get12HHour           GetMinutes           GetSeconds

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2015 09 27 15 07 53     System out println  new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy MM dd HH mm ss   format Calendar getInstance   getTime               15 07 53     System out println  new SimpleDateFormat  HH mm ss   format Calendar getInstance   getTime               09 28 2015     System out println new SimpleDateFormat  MM dd yyyy   format Calendar getInstance   getTime              20150928 161823     System out println  new SimpleDateFormat  yyyyMMdd HHmmss   format Calendar getInstance   getTime               Mon Sep 28 16 24 28 CEST 2015     System out println  Calendar getInstance   getTime              Mon Sep 28 16 24 51 CEST 2015     System out println  new Date System currentTimeMillis               Mon Sep 28     System out println  new Date   toString   substring 0  10             2015-09-28     System out println  new java sql Date System currentTimeMillis               14 32 26     Date d   new Date        System out println   d getTime     1000   60   60    24          d getTime     1000   60    60          d getTime     1000    60            2015-09-28 17 12 35 584     System out println  new Timestamp System currentTimeMillis               Java 8         2015-09-28T16 16 23 308 02 00 Europe Belgrade      System out println  ZonedDateTime now              Mon  28 Sep 2015 16 16 23  0200     System out println  ZonedDateTime now   format DateTimeFormatter RFC 1123 DATE TIME             2015-09-28     System out println  LocalDate now ZoneId of  Europe Paris          rest zones id in ZoneId class         16     System out println  LocalTime now   getHour              2015-09-28T16 16 23 315     System out println  LocalDateTime now

User · Answer

Java 8 or above  LocalDateTime now   and ZonedDateTime now

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java util Date date   new java util Date      It s automatically populated with the time it s instantiated

User · Answer

In Java 8 it is   LocalDateTime now     and in case you need time zone info   ZonedDateTime now     and in case you want to print fancy formatted string   System out println ZonedDateTime now   format DateTimeFormatter RFC 1123 DATE TIME

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Current Date using java 8  First  let s use java time LocalDate to get the current system date   LocalDate localDate   LocalDate now      To get the date in any other timezone we can use LocalDate now ZoneId    LocalDate localDate   LocalDate now ZoneId of  GMT 02 30       We can also use java time LocalDateTime to get an instance of LocalDate   LocalDateTime localDateTime   LocalDateTime now    LocalDate localDate   localDateTime toLocalDate

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As mentioned the basic Date   can do what you need in terms of getting the current time   In my recent experience working heavily with Java dates there are a lot of oddities with the built in classes  as well as deprecation of many of the Date class methods    One oddity that stood out to me was that months are 0 index based which from a technical standpoint makes sense  but in real terms can be very confusing   If you are only concerned with the current date that should suffice - however if you intend to do a lot of manipulating calculations with dates it could be very beneficial to use a third party library  so many exist because many Java developers have been unsatisfied with the built in functionality    I second Stephen C s recommendation as I have found Joda-time to be very useful in simplifying my work with dates  it is also very well documented and you can find many useful examples throughout the web   I even ended up writing a static wrapper class  as DateUtils  which I use to consolidate and simplify all of my common date manipulation

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tl dr  Instant now                              Capture the current moment in UTC  with a resolution of nanoseconds  Returns a  Instant  object        or      ZonedDateTime now                        Capture the current moment as seen in        ZoneId of   America Montreal             the wall-clock time used by the people of a particular region  a time zone                                            Returns a  ZonedDateTime  object    java time  A few of the Answers mention that java time classes are the modern replacement for the troublesome old legacy date-time classes bundled with the earliest versions of Java  Below is a bit more information     Time zone  The other Answers fail to explain how a time zone is crucial in determining the current date and time  For any given moment  the date and the time vary around the globe by zone  For example  a few minutes after midnight is a new day in Paris France while still being    yesterday    in Montr  al Qu  bec   Instant  Much of your business logic and data storage exchange should be done in UTC  as a best practice    To get the current moment in UTC with a resolution in nanoseconds  use Instant class  Conventional computer hardware clocks are limited in their accuracy  so the current moment may be captured in milliseconds or microseconds rather than nanoseconds   Instant instant   Instant now      ZonedDateTime  You can adjust that Instant into other time zones  Apply a ZoneId object to get a ZonedDateTime   ZoneId z   ZoneId of   America Montreal     ZonedDateTime zdt   instant atZone  z      We can skip the Instant and get the current ZonedDateTime directly   ZonedDateTime zdt   ZonedDateTime now  z      Always pass that optional time zone argument  If omitted  your JVM   s current default time zone is applied  The default can change at any moment  even during runtime  Do not subject your app to an externality out of your control  Always specify the desired expected time zone   ZonedDateTime do Not Do This   ZonedDateTime now       BAD - Never rely implicitly on the current default time zone    You can later extract an Instant from the ZonedDateTime   Instant instant   zdt toInstant      Always use an Instant or ZonedDateTime rather than a LocalDateTime when you want an actual moment on the timeline  The Local    types purposely have no concept of time zone so they represent only a rough idea of a possible moment  To get an actual moment you must assign a time zone to transform the Local    types into a ZonedDateTime and thereby make it meaningful   LocalDate  The LocalDate class represents a date-only value without time-of-day and without time zone   ZoneId z   ZoneId of   America Montreal     LocalDate today   LocalDate now  z        Always pass a time zone    Strings  To generate a String representing the date-time value  simply call toString on the java time classes for the standard ISO 8601 formats   String output   myLocalDate toString        2016-09-23       or      String output   zdt toString        2016-09-23T12 34 56 789 03 00 America Montreal    The ZonedDateTime class extends the standard format by wisely appending the name of the time zone in square brackets   For other formats  search Stack Overflow for many Questions and Answers on the DateTimeFormatter class   Avoid LocalDateTime  Contrary to the comment on the Question by RamanSB  you should not use LocalDateTime class for the current date-time   The LocalDateTime purposely lacks any time zone or offset-from-UTC information  So  this is not appropriate when you are tracking a specific moment on the timeline  Certainly not appropriate for capturing the current moment    A LocalDateTime has only a date and a time-of-day such as  noon on 23rd of January 2020   but we have no idea if that is noon in Tokyo Japan or noon in Toledo Ohio US  two different moments many hours apart   The    Local    wording is counter-intuitive  It means any locality rather than any one specific locality  For example Christmas this year starts at midnight on the 25th of December  2017-12-25T00 00 00  to be represented as a LocalDateTime  But this means midnight at various points around the globe at different times  Midnight happens first in Kiribati  later in New Zealand  hours more later in India  and so on  with several more hours passing before Christmas begins in France when the kids in Canada are still awaiting that day  Each one of these Christmas-start points would be represented as a separate ZonedDateTime      From outside your system  If you cannot trust your system clock  see Java  Get current Date and Time from Server not System clock and my Answer     java time Clock  To harness an alternate supplier of the current moment  write a subclass of the abstract java time Clock class    You can pass your Clock implementation as an argument to the various java time methods  For example  Instant now  clock     Instant instant   Instant now  yourClockGoesHere       For testing purposes  note the alternate implementations of Clock available statically from Clock itself  fixed  offset  tick  and more     About java time  The java time framework is built into Java 8 and later  These classes supplant the troublesome old legacy date-time classes such as java util Date  Calendar   amp  SimpleDateFormat   To learn more  see the Oracle Tutorial  And search Stack Overflow for many examples and explanations  Specification is JSR 310   The Joda-Time project  now in maintenance mode  advises migration to the java time classes   You may exchange java time objects directly with your database  Use a JDBC driver compliant with JDBC 4 2 or later  No need for strings  no need for java sql   classes   Where to obtain the java time classes     Java SE 8  Java SE 9  Java SE 10  Java SE 11  and later  - Part of the standard Java API with a bundled implementation    Java 9 adds some minor features and fixes   Java SE 6 and Java SE 7   Most of the java time functionality is back-ported to Java 6  amp  7 in ThreeTen-Backport   Android   Later versions of Android bundle implementations of the java time classes  For earlier Android   lt 26   the ThreeTenABP project adapts ThreeTen-Backport  mentioned above   See How to use ThreeTenABP          The ThreeTen-Extra project extends java time with additional classes  This project is a proving ground for possible future additions to java time  You may find some useful classes here such as Interval  YearWeek  YearQuarter  and more

User · Answer

Attention  only for use with Java versions  lt 8  For Java 8  check other replies    If you just need to output a time stamp in format YYYY MM DD-HH MM SS  very frequent case  then here s the way to do it   String timeStamp   new SimpleDateFormat  yyyyMMdd HHmmss   format Calendar getInstance   getTime

User · Answer

There are many different methods    System currentTimeMillis   Date Calendar

User · Answer

New Data-Time API is introduced with the dawn of Java 8  This is due   to following issues that were caused in the old data-time API       Difficult to handle time zone   need to write lot of code to deal with   time zones       Not Thread Safe   java util Date is not thread safe    So have a look around with Java 8  import java time LocalDate  import java time LocalTime  import java time LocalDateTime  import java time Month    public class DataTimeChecker        public static void main String args              DataTimeChecker dateTimeChecker   new DataTimeChecker            dateTimeChecker DateTime               public void DateTime                Get the current date and time         LocalDateTime currentTime   LocalDateTime now            System out println  Current DateTime      currentTime            LocalDate date1   currentTime toLocalDate            System out println  Date       date1            Month month   currentTime getMonth            int day   currentTime getDayOfMonth            int seconds   currentTime getSecond             System out println  Month       month           System out println  Day       day           System out println  Seconds       seconds            LocalDateTime date2   currentTime withDayOfMonth 17  withYear 2018           System out println  Date       date2              Prints 17 May 2018         LocalDate date3   LocalDate of 2018  Month MAY  17           System out println  Date       date3              Prints 04 hour 45 minutes         LocalTime date4   LocalTime of 4  45           System out println  Date       date4               Convert to a String          LocalTime date5   LocalTime parse  20 15 30            System out println  Date       date5             Output of the coding above    Current DateTime  2018-05-17T04 40 34 603 Date   2018-05-17 Month   MAY Day   17 Seconds   34 Date   2018-05-17T04 40 34 603 Date   2018-05-17 Date   04 45 Date   20 15 30

User · Answer

import java util    import java text     public class DateDemo      public static void main String args            Date dNow   new Date           SimpleDateFormat ft          new SimpleDateFormat   E yyyy MM dd  at  hh mm ss a zzz          System out println  Current Date      ft format dNow                you can use date for fet current data  so using SimpleDateFormat get format

User · Answer

Create object of date and simply print it down   Date d   new Date System currentTimeMillis     System out print d

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I ll go ahead and throw this answer in because it is all I needed when I had the same question   Date currentDate   new Date System currentTimeMillis       currentDate is now your current date in a Java Date object

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If you want the current date as String  try this   DateFormat dateFormat   new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy MM dd HH mm ss    Date date   new Date    System out println dateFormat format date      or  DateFormat dateFormat   new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy MM dd HH mm ss    Calendar cal   Calendar getInstance    System out println dateFormat format cal getTime        http   www mkyong com java java-how-to-get-current-date-time-date-and-calender

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Use   SimpleDateFormat sdf   new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy MM dd  HH mm ss    System out println sdf format System currentTimeMillis        The print statement will print the time when it is called and not when the SimpleDateFormat was created  So it can be called repeatedly without creating any new objects

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For java util Date  just create a new Date    DateFormat dateFormat   new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy MM dd HH mm ss    Date date   new Date    System out println dateFormat format date      2016 11 16 12 08 43   For java util Calendar  uses Calendar getInstance    DateFormat dateFormat   new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy MM dd HH mm ss    Calendar cal   Calendar getInstance    System out println dateFormat format cal      2016 11 16 12 08 43   For java time LocalDateTime  uses LocalDateTime now    DateTimeFormatter dtf   DateTimeFormatter ofPattern  yyyy MM dd HH mm ss    LocalDateTime now   LocalDateTime now    System out println dtf format now      2016 11 16 12 08 43   For java time LocalDate  uses LocalDate now    DateTimeFormatter dtf   DateTimeFormatter ofPattern  yyyy MM dd    LocalDate localDate   LocalDate now    System out println dtf format localDate      2016 11 16   Reference  https   www mkyong com java java-how-to-get-current-date-time-date-and-calender

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just try this code  import java text DateFormat  import java text SimpleDateFormat  import java util Calendar  import java util Date  public class CurrentTimeDateCalendar       public static void getCurrentTimeUsingDate             Date date   new Date            String strDateFormat    quot hh mm ss a quot           DateFormat dateFormat   new SimpleDateFormat strDateFormat           String formattedDate  dateFormat format date           System out println  quot Current time of the day using Date - 12 hour format   quot    formattedDate             public static void getCurrentTimeUsingCalendar             Calendar cal   Calendar getInstance            Date date cal getTime            DateFormat dateFormat   new SimpleDateFormat  quot HH mm ss quot            String formattedDate dateFormat format date           System out println  quot Current time of the day using Calendar - 24 hour format   quot   formattedDate            which the sample output is   Current time of the day using Date - 12 hour format  11 13 01 PM Current time of the day using Calendar - 24 hour format  23 13 01  more information on  Getting Current Date Time in Java

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You can use Date object and format by yourself  It is hard to format and need more codes  as a example   Date dateInstance   new Date    int year   dateInstance getYear   1900   Returns the year represented by this date  minus 1900  int date   dateInstance getDate    int month   dateInstance getMonth    int day   dateInstance getDay    int hours   dateInstance getHours    int min   dateInstance getMinutes    int sec   dateInstance getSeconds     String dayOfWeek       switch day       case 0          dayOfWeek    Sunday           break      case 1          dayOfWeek    Monday           break      case 2          dayOfWeek    Tuesday           break      case 3          dayOfWeek    Wednesday           break      case 4          dayOfWeek    Thursday           break      case 5          dayOfWeek    Friday           break      case 6          dayOfWeek    Saturday           break    System out println  Date      year   -   month    -    date        dayOfWeek   System out println  Time      hours       min         sec     output    Date  2017-6-23 Sunday Time  14 6 20   As you can see this is the worst way you can do it and according to oracle documentation it is deprecated   Oracle doc      The class Date represents a specific instant in time  with millisecond   precision       Prior to JDK 1 1  the class Date had two additional functions  It   allowed the interpretation of dates as year  month  day  hour  minute    and second values  It also allowed the formatting and parsing of date   strings  Unfortunately  the API for these functions was not amenable   to internationalization  As of JDK 1 1  the Calendar class should be   used to convert between dates and time fields and the DateFormat class   should be used to format and parse date strings  The corresponding   methods in Date are deprecated    So alternatively  you can use Calendar class   Calendar YEAR    and lot more   To get current time  you can use   Calendar rightNow   Calendar getInstance         Doc       Like other locale-sensitive classes  Calendar provides a class method    getInstance  for getting a generally useful object of this type    Calendar s getInstance method returns a Calendar object whose calendar   fields have been initialized with the current date and time   Below code for to get only date  Date rightNow   Calendar getInstance   getTime    System out println rightNow     Also  Calendar class have Subclasses  GregorianCalendar is a one of them and concrete subclass of Calendar and provides the standard calendar system used by most of the world   Example using GregorianCalendar   Calendar cal   new GregorianCalendar    int hours   cal get Calendar HOUR   int minute   cal get Calendar MINUTE   int second   cal get Calendar SECOND   int ap   cal get Calendar AM PM    String amVSpm  if ap    0       amVSpm    AM    else      amVSpm    PM      String timer   hours    -    minute    -    second        amVSpm  System out println timer     You can use SimpleDateFormat  simple and quick way to format date   String pattern    yyyy-MM-dd   SimpleDateFormat simpleDateFormat   new SimpleDateFormat pattern    String date   simpleDateFormat format new Date     System out println date     Read this Jakob Jenkov tutorial  Java SimpleDateFormat   As others mentioned  when we need to do manipulation from dates  we didn t had simple and best way or we couldn t satisfied built in classes  APIs   As a example  When we need to get different between two dates  when we need to compare two dates there is in-built method also for this  and many more  We had to use third party libraries  One of the good and popular one is Joda Time   Also read    How to get properly current date and time in Joda-Time  JodaTime - how to get current time in UTC Examples for JodaTime  Download Joda     The happiest thing is now in java 8   no one need to download and use libraries for any reasons  A simple example to get current date  amp  time in Java 8   LocalTime localTime   LocalTime now    System out println localTime      with time zone LocalTime localTimeWtZone   LocalTime now ZoneId of  GMT 02 30     System out println localTimeWtZone     One of the good blog post to read about Java 8 date   And keep remeber to find out more about Java date and time because there is lot more ways and or useful ways that you can get use    Oracle tutorials for date  amp  time  Oracle tutorials for formatter  Lesson  Standard Calendar    EDIT   According to  BasilBourque comment  the troublesome old date-time classes such as java util Date  java util Calendar  and java text SimpleTextFormat are now legacy  supplanted by the java time classes

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System out println  new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy MM dd - hh mm ss a   format Calendar getInstance   getTime             2018 02 10 - 05 04 20 PM   date time with AM PM

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1st Understand the java util Date class  1 1 How to obtain current Date  import java util Date   class Demostration      public static void main String  args           Date date   new Date       date object         System out println date      Try to print the date object           1 2 How to use getTime   method  import java util Date  public class Main       public static void main String  args           Date date   new Date            long timeInMilliSeconds   date getTime            System out println timeInMilliSeconds             This will return the number of milliseconds since January 1  1970  00 00 00 GMT for time comparison purposes   1 3 How to format time using SimpleDateFormat class  import java text DateFormat  import java text SimpleDateFormat  import java util Date   class Demostration      public static void main String  args           Date date new Date            DateFormat dateFormat new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy-MM-dd            String formattedDate dateFormat format date           System out println formattedDate             Also try using different format patterns like  yyyy-MM-dd hh mm ss  and select desired pattern  http   docs oracle com javase 7 docs api java text SimpleDateFormat html  2nd Understand the java util Calendar class  2 1 Using Calendar Class to obtain current time stamp  import java util Calendar   class Demostration      public static void main String  args           Calendar calendar Calendar getInstance            System out println calendar getTime               2 2 Try using setTime and other set methods for set calendar to different date   Source  http   javau91 blogspot com

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I find this to be the best way   DateFormat dateFormat   new SimpleDateFormat  yyyy MM dd HH mm ss    Calendar cal   Calendar getInstance    System out println dateFormat format cal getTime         2014 08 06 16 00 22

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Similar to above solutions   But I always find myself looking for this chunk of code   Date date Calendar getInstance   getTime    System out println date

User · Answer

Have you looked at java util Date  It is exactly what you want

[java] How to get the current date/time in Java

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