CODEWITHSUNDEEP
javalinux
user1607656
user1607656

Reputation:

Get change time instead of modify time for file in java on linux

is there a way in java to access the change time attribute of a file on linux?

I tried to use java.io.File.lastModified() method, but this method is returning only modify time attribute for the file.

What I want to do is to detect the time of upload of a file to a linux server. I noticed that modify time attribute has the timestamp of file modification on my local machine, however, the change time attribute is the time of upload to a linux server.

Thank you for any advice.

Upvotes: 2

Views: 1562

Answers (1)

Justin Lee
Justin Lee

Reputation: 31

You can use the following method to get change time of a file.

Files.getAttribute(new File("<path to a file>").toPath(),"unix:ctime")

Here is the example code:

   import java.util.*;
import java.io.*;
import java.nio.file.*;
import java.nio.file.attribute.*;
public class Test{
    public static void main(String[] args){
        try
                {
                   System.out.println(Files.getAttribute(new File("b").toPath(),"unix:ctime"));
                   System.out.println(new Date(((FileTime)Files.getAttribute(new File("b").toPath(),"unix:ctime")).toMillis()));
                }
                catch (Exception e)
                {
                    e.printStackTrace();
                }
    }
}


When running `LANG=en_us.UTF-8 stat b` on the console, the output is:

      File: 'b'
      Size: 0               Blocks: 0          IO Block: 4096   regular empty file
    Device: fd00h/64768d    Inode: 101210225   Links: 1
    Access: (0644/-rw-r--r--)  Uid: (    0/    root)   Gid: (    0/    root)
    Context: unconfined_u:object_r:admin_home_t:s0
    Access: 2018-06-26 10:16:18.649378326 +0800
    Modify: 2018-06-26 10:16:18.649378326 +0800
    Change: 2018-06-26 10:17:06.009384678 +0800
     Birth: -

Running the example code with the `Test` class provides the following output:

    {ctime=2018-06-26T02:17:06.009384Z}

As you may see it changed the change time hour from `10` to `02`.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions