CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javadatetime
mrblah
mrblah

Reputation: 103507

How to get the current date and time

How do I get the current date and time in Java?

I am looking for something that is equivalent to DateTime.Now from C#.

Upvotes: 379

Views: 447796

Answers (10)

cdmckay
cdmckay

Reputation: 32240

The Java Date and Calendar classes are considered by many to be poorly designed. You should take a look at Joda Time, a library commonly used in lieu of Java's built-in date libraries.

The equivalent of DateTime.Now in Joda Time is:

DateTime dt = new DateTime();

Update

As noted in the comments, the latest versions of Joda Time have a DateTime.now() method, so:

DateTime dt = DateTime.now();

Upvotes: 58

Basil Bourque
Basil Bourque

Reputation: 338584

tl;dr

Instant.now()

java.time

The java.util.Date class has been outmoded by the new java.time package (Tutorial) in Java 8 and later. The old java.util.Date/.Calendar classes are notoriously troublesome, confusing, and flawed. Avoid them.

ZonedDateTime

Get the current moment in java.time.

ZonedDateTime now = ZonedDateTime.now();

A ZonedDateTime encapsulates:

  • Date.
  • Time-of-day, with a fraction of a second to nanosecond resolution.
  • Time zone.

If no time zone is specified, your JVM’s current default time zone is assigned silently. Better to specify your desired/expected time zone than rely implicitly on default.

ZoneId z = ZoneId.of( "Pacific/Auckland" );
ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.now( z );

UTC

Generally better to get in the habit of doing your back-end work (business logic, database, storage, data exchange) all in UTC time zone. The code above relies implicitly on the JVM’s current default time zone.

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

Instant instant = Instant.now();

The Instant class is a basic building-block class in java.time and may be used often in your code.

When you need more flexibility in formatting, transform into an OffsetDateTime. Specify a ZoneOffset object. For UTC use the handy constant for UTC.

OffsetDateTime odt = instant.atOffset( ZoneOffset.UTC );

Time Zone

You easily adjust to another time zone for presentation to the user. Use a proper time zone name, never the 3-4 letter codes such as EST or IST.

ZoneId z = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
ZonedDateTime nowMontreal = instant.atZone( z );

Generate a String representation of that date-time value, localized.

String output = DateTimeFormatter
    .ofLocalizedDate( FormatStyle.FULL )
    .withLocale( Locale.CANADA_FRENCH )
    .format ( nowMontreal );

Instant

Or, to stay in UTC, use Instant. An Instant object represents a moment on the timeline, to nanosecond resolution, always in UTC. This provides the building block for a zoned date-time, along with a time zone assignment. You can think of it conceptually this way:

ZonedDateTime = Instant + ZoneId

You can extract an Instant from a ZonedDateTime.

Instant instantNow = zdt.toInstant();

You can start with an Instant. No need to specify a time zone here, as Instant is always in UTC.

Instant now = Instant.now();

Upvotes: 58

akhil_mittal
akhil_mittal

Reputation: 24157

Java has always got inadequate support for the date and time use cases. For example, the existing classes (such as java.util.Date and SimpleDateFormatter) aren’t thread-safe which can lead to concurrency issues. Also there are certain flaws in API. For example, years in java.util.Date start at 1900, months start at 1, and days start at 0—not very intuitive. These issues led to popularity of third-party date and time libraries, such as Joda-Time. To address a new date and time API is designed for Java SE 8.

LocalDateTime timePoint = LocalDateTime.now();
System.out.println(timePoint);

As per doc:

The method now() returns the current date-time using the system clock and default time-zone, not null. It obtains the current date-time from the system clock in the default time-zone. This will query the system clock in the default time-zone to obtain the current date-time. Using this method will prevent the ability to use an alternate clock for testing because the clock is hard-coded.

Upvotes: 3

Vitalii Fedorenko
Vitalii Fedorenko

Reputation: 114450

In Java 8 it's:

ZonedDateTime dateTime = ZonedDateTime.now();

Upvotes: 14

user243773
user243773

Reputation: 209

java.lang.System.currentTimeMillis(); will return the datetime since the epoch

Upvotes: 10

Chandra Patni
Chandra Patni

Reputation: 17577

import java.util.Date;   
Date now = new Date();

Note that the Date object is mutable and if you want to do anything sophisticated, use jodatime.

Upvotes: 12

gordy
gordy

Reputation: 9786

import org.joda.time.DateTime;

DateTime now = DateTime.now();

Upvotes: 6

ralph
ralph

Reputation: 1017

I prefer using the Calendar object.

Calendar now = GregorianCalendar.getInstance()

I find it much easier to work with. You can also get a Date object from the Calendar.

http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/util/GregorianCalendar.html

Upvotes: 16

delfuego
delfuego

Reputation: 14265

Just construct a new Date object without any arguments; this will assign the current date and time to the new object.

import java.util.Date;

Date d = new Date();

In the words of the Javadocs for the zero-argument constructor:

Allocates a Date object and initializes it so that it represents the time at which it was allocated, measured to the nearest millisecond.

Make sure you're using java.util.Date and not java.sql.Date -- the latter doesn't have a zero-arg constructor, and has somewhat different semantics that are the topic of an entirely different conversation. :)

Upvotes: 443

parkerfath
parkerfath

Reputation: 1649

If you create a new Date object, by default it will be set to the current time:

import java.util.Date;
Date now = new Date();

Upvotes: 5

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