Java Code for Getting Current Time

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 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 "obsolete", and the Joda maintainers are recommending that people migrate.³.

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<sup>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.</sup>

How can I get current time as 09:04:15 instead of 9:4:15 when using Date?

You can use SimpleDateFormat, e.g.:

SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss");
Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
System.out.println(dateFormat.format(calendar.getTime()));

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 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 the current time and set it to a clock?

A couple things....first, you should really familiarize yourself with the Java Date API, along with the DateFormat and SimpleDateFormat classes. Although it's not perfect, it can certainly do the job for you.

Not sure where that int is coming from but dates are generally based on the number of milliseconds since exactly midnight on January 1, 1970.

Second, you're close, at least in the core approach. After every minute, the thread wakes up, as you have it now, gets the current time in milliseconds, formats it as a String in the form of "HH:mm", and prints it out. At the end of the day (no pun intended), you're trying to do the opposite of what this person wanted. He/she had 24hr time but wanted 12hr time.

long timeInMillis = System.currentTimeMillis();
Calendar cal1 = Calendar.getInstance();
cal1.setTimeInMillis(timeInMillis);
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm");
dateforrow = dateFormat.format(cal1.getTime());

Or something similar.

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 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 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. :)

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