How to get the current date/time in Java
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 Javalong
). 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 aDate
object initialized with the current date / time. The problem is that theDate
API methods are mostly flawed ... and deprecated.Calendar.getInstance()
gives you aCalendar
object initialized with the current date / time, using the defaultLocale
andTimeZone
. Other overloads allow you to use a specificLocale
and/orTimeZone
. 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()
andjava.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 "obsolete", and the Joda maintainers are recommending that people migrate.3.
1 - System.currentTimeMillis()
gives the "system" 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: "It cannot represent an instant on the time-line without additional information such as an offset or time-zone."
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 "end of life" for Joda has not been announced, and the Joda APIs have not been marked as Deprecated.
How to get the current date and time
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. :)
How to get the current date and time of your timezone in Java?
Date
is always UTC-based... or time-zone neutral, depending on how you want to view it. A Date
only represents a point in time; it is independent of time zone, just a number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch. There's no notion of a "local instance of Date
." Use Date
in conjunction with Calendar
and/or TimeZone.getDefault()
to use a "local" time zone. Use TimeZone.getTimeZone("Europe/Madrid")
to get the Madrid time zone.
... or use Joda Time, which tends to make the whole thing clearer, IMO. In Joda Time you'd use a DateTime
value, which is an instant in time in a particular calendar system and time zone.
In Java 8 you'd use java.time.ZonedDateTime
, which is the Java 8 equivalent of Joda Time's DateTime
.
How can I get the current date and time in UTC or GMT in Java?
java.util.Date
has no specific time zone, although its value is most commonly thought of in relation to UTC. What makes you think it's in local time?
To be precise: the value within a java.util.Date
is the number of milliseconds since the Unix epoch, which occurred at midnight January 1st 1970, UTC. The same epoch could also be described in other time zones, but the traditional description is in terms of UTC. As it's a number of milliseconds since a fixed epoch, the value within java.util.Date
is the same around the world at any particular instant, regardless of local time zone.
I suspect the problem is that you're displaying it via an instance of Calendar which uses the local timezone, or possibly using Date.toString()
which also uses the local timezone, or a SimpleDateFormat
instance, which, by default, also uses local timezone.
If this isn't the problem, please post some sample code.
I would, however, recommend that you use Joda-Time anyway, which offers a much clearer API.
How to get current time and date in Android
You could use:
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
Date currentTime = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();
There are plenty of constants in Calendar for everything you need.
Check the Calendar class documentation.
How to get today's Date in java in the following pattern dd/MM/yyyy?
Using java.time.LocalDate
,
DateTimeFormatter dtf = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyy/MM/dd");
LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.now();
System.out.println(dtf.format(localDate)); //2016/11/16
Use DateTimeFormatter
to format the date as you want.
In your case the pattern is "dd/MM/yyyy".
Info ⬇️
Java 8 introduced new APIs for Date and Time to address the shortcomings of the older java.util.Date
and java.util.Calendar
. The core classes of the new Java 8 project that are part of the java.time package like LocalDate
, LocalTime
, LocalDateTime
, ZonedDateTime
, Period
, Duration
and their supported APIs.
The LocalDate
provides various utility methods to obtain a variety of information. For example:
1) The following code snippet gets the current local date and adds one day:
LocalDate tomorrow = LocalDate.now().plusDays(1);
2) This example obtains the current date and subtracts one month. Note how it accepts an enum as the time unit:
LocalDate previousMonthSameDay = LocalDate.now().minus(1, ChronoUnit.MONTHS);
How to get current date time in the format 2019101620000583?
java.time
Get the current moment in UTC.
OffsetDateTime odt = OffsetDateTime.now( ZoneOffset.UTC ) ;
Define a formatting pattern for your desired output.
DateTimeFormatter f = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "uuuuMMddHHmmss" ) ;
Generate a String with text in your desired format.
String output = odt.format( f ) ;
For a time zone, similar to code above but use ZonedDateTime
in place of OffsetDateTime
.
ZonedDateTime.now( ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" ) )
ISO 8601
Tip: Generally best to use the standard ISO 8601 formats when serializing date-time values as text. To comply with the “basic” version of ISO 8601:
- insert a
T
between the date portion and the time-of-day portion. - Append a
Z
for a moment in UTC. Otherwise append the offset.
So this:
DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "uuuuMMdd'T'HHmmssXXXXX" )
See this full example run live at IdeOne.com.
OffsetDateTime odt = OffsetDateTime.now( ZoneOffset.UTC ) ;
DateTimeFormatter f = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern( "uuuuMMdd'T'HHmmssXXXXX" ) ;
String output = odt.format( f ) ;
odt.toString(): 2019-11-09T04:38:47.972145Z
output: 20191109T043847Z
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
, & 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 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport.
- Android
- Later versions of Android bundle implementations of the java.time classes.
- For earlier Android (<26), the ThreeTenABP project adapts ThreeTen-Backport (mentioned above). See How to use ThreeTenABP….
How to get current timestamp in string format in Java? yyyy.MM.dd.HH.mm.ss
Replace
new Timestamp();
with
new java.util.Date()
because there is no default constructor for Timestamp
, or you can do it with the method:
new Timestamp(System.currentTimeMillis());
How to obtain the start time and end time of a day?
tl;dr
LocalDate // Represents an entire day, without time-of-day and without time zone.
.now( // Capture the current date.
ZoneId.of( "Asia/Tokyo" ) // Returns a `ZoneId` object.
) // Returns a `LocalDate` object.
.atStartOfDay( // Determines the first moment of the day as seen on that date in that time zone. Not all days start at 00:00!
ZoneId.of( "Asia/Tokyo" )
) // Returns a `ZonedDateTime` object.
Start of day
Get the full length of the today as seen in a time zone.
Using Half-Open approach, where the beginning is inclusive while the ending is exclusive. This approach solves the flaw in your code that fails to account for the very last second of the day.
ZoneId zoneId = ZoneId.of( "Africa/Tunis" ) ;
LocalDate today = LocalDate.now( zoneId ) ;
ZonedDateTime zdtStart = today.atStartOfDay( zoneId ) ;
ZonedDateTime zdtStop = today.plusDays( 1 ).atStartOfDay( zoneId ) ;
zdtStart.toString() = 2020-01-30T00:00+01:00[Africa/Tunis]
zdtStop.toString() = 2020-01-31T00:00+01:00[Africa/Tunis]
See the same moments in UTC.
Instant start = zdtStart.toInstant() ;
Instant stop = zdtStop.toInstant() ;
start.toString() = 2020-01-29T23:00:00Z
stop.toString() = 2020-01-30T23:00:00Z
If you want the entire day of a date as seen in UTC rather than in a time zone, use OffsetDateTime
.
LocalDate today = LocalDate.now( ZoneOffset.UTC ) ;
OffsetDateTime odtStart = today.atTime( OffsetTime.MIN ) ;
OffsetDateTime odtStop = today.plusDays( 1 ).atTime( OffsetTime.MIN ) ;
odtStart.toString() = 2020-01-30T00:00+18:00
odtStop.toString() = 2020-01-31T00:00+18:00
These OffsetDateTime
objects will already be in UTC, but you can call toInstant
if you need such objects which are always in UTC by definition.
Instant start = odtStart.toInstant() ;
Instant stop = odtStop.toInstant() ;
start.toString() = 2020-01-29T06:00:00Z
stop.toString() = 2020-01-30T06:00:00Z
Tip: You may be interested in adding the ThreeTen-Extra library to your project to use its Interval
class to represent this pair of Instant
objects. This class offers useful methods for comparison such as abuts
, overlaps
, contains
, and more.
Interval interval = Interval.of( start , stop ) ;
interval.toString() = 2020-01-29T06:00:00Z/2020-01-30T06:00:00Z
Half-Open
The answer by mprivat is correct. His point is to not try to obtain end of a day, but rather compare to "before start of next day". His idea is known as the "Half-Open" approach where a span of time has a beginning that is inclusive while the ending is exclusive.
- The current date-time frameworks of Java (java.util.Date/Calendar and Joda-Time) both use milliseconds from the epoch. But in Java 8, the new JSR 310 java.time.* classes use nanoseconds resolution. Any code you wrote based on forcing the milliseconds count of last moment of day would be incorrect if switched to the new classes.
- Comparing data from other sources becomes faulty if they employ other resolutions. For example, Unix libraries typically employ whole seconds, and databases such as Postgres resolve date-time to microseconds.
- Some Daylight Saving Time changes happen over midnight which might further confuse things.
Joda-Time 2.3 offers a method for this very purpose, to obtain first moment of the day: withTimeAtStartOfDay()
. Similarly in java.time, LocalDate::atStartOfDay
.
Search StackOverflow for "joda half-open" to see more discussion and examples.
See this post, Time intervals and other ranges should be half-open, by Bill Schneider.
Avoid legacy date-time classes
The java.util.Date and .Calendar classes are notoriously troublesome. Avoid them.
Use java.time classes. The java.time framework is the official successor of the highly successful Joda-Time library.
java.time
The java.time framework is built into Java 8 and later. Back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in the ThreeTen-Backport project, further adapted to Android in the ThreeTenABP project.
An Instant
is a moment on the timeline in UTC with a resolution of nanoseconds.
Instant instant = Instant.now();
Apply a time zone to get the wall-clock time for some locality.
ZoneId zoneId = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.ofInstant( instant , zoneId );
To get the first moment of the day go through the LocalDate
class and its atStartOfDay
method.
ZonedDateTime zdtStart = zdt.toLocalDate().atStartOfDay( zoneId );
Using Half-Open approach, get first moment of following day.
ZonedDateTime zdtTomorrowStart = zdtStart.plusDays( 1 );
Currently the java.time framework lacks an Interval
class as described below for Joda-Time. However, the ThreeTen-Extra project extends java.time with additional classes. This project is the proving ground for possible future additions to java.time. Among its classes is Interval
. Construct an Interval
by passing a pair of Instant
objects. We can extract an Instant
from our ZonedDateTime
objects.
Interval today = Interval.of( zdtStart.toInstant() , zdtTomorrowStart.toInstant() );
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
, & 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. Hibernate 5 & JPA 2.2 support java.time.
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 brought some minor features and fixes.
- Java SE 6 and Java SE 7
- Most of the java.time functionality is back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport.
- Android
- Later versions of Android (26+) bundle implementations of the java.time classes.
- For earlier Android (<26), a process known as API desugaring brings a subset of the java.time functionality not originally built into Android.
- If the desugaring does not offer what you need, the ThreeTenABP project adapts ThreeTen-Backport (mentioned above) to Android. See How to use ThreeTenABP….
Joda-Time
UPDATE: The Joda-Time project is now in maintenance-mode, and advises migration to the java.time classes. I am leaving this section intact for history.
Joda-Time has three classes to represent a span of time in various ways: Interval
, Period
, and Duration
. An Interval
has a specific beginning and ending on the timeline of the Universe. This fits our need to represent "a day".
We call the method withTimeAtStartOfDay
rather than set time of day to zeros. Because of Daylight Saving Time and other anomalies the first moment of the day may not be 00:00:00
.
Example code using Joda-Time 2.3.
DateTimeZone timeZone = DateTimeZone.forID( "America/Montreal" );
DateTime now = DateTime.now( timeZone );
DateTime todayStart = now.withTimeAtStartOfDay();
DateTime tomorrowStart = now.plusDays( 1 ).withTimeAtStartOfDay();
Interval today = new Interval( todayStart, tomorrowStart );
If you must, you can convert to a java.util.Date.
java.util.Date date = todayStart.toDate();
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