Java date FAQ: Can you show me how to get today’s date in Java?
Solution: Use the java.util.Date() constructor
You can use this approach to create a new Date in Java:
Date d = new java.util.Date();
At some point I thought that approach was deprecated, but when I look at the Java 9 Date Javadoc now (April, 2018), I don’t see that it’s deprecated. So this is the simplest way to create a new Java Date
instance to represent the current date and time.
Another option: Using java.util.Calendar
Because I thought that Date constructor was deprecated, at some point I began using the Java Calendar class to create a Date
object that represents “today” or “now.” The following code shows how to do this:
Date date = java.util.Calendar.getInstance().getTime();
Bonus: Formatting the current Java Date output
To provide a simple human-readable format to the Java Date
output, you use a SimpleDateFormat
class, as shown in the following Java Date
, Calendar
, and SimpleDateFormat
example:
import java.util.Date; import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; /** * Returns a folder name based on the current date/time, something * like "20080725.013755". */ public String getBackupFolderName() { Date date = new Date(); SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd.hhmmss"); return sdf.format(date); }
Hopefully that sample code doesn’t need too much explanation. In short, I create a Date
object, then specify the SimpleDateFormat
I want to use to format the date output, then I return that formatted output from the method as a String
.
Summary: Java current date
In summary, if you need to create a new date in Java, I hope these examples are helpful.