How to get current date and time in java

Using SimpleDateFormat and Date/Calendar class, we can easily get current date and time in Java. Below are the code snippets of both the ways:

Current date and time can be obtained using two methods:

1) Using Date class

• Specify the desired pattern while creating object of SimpleDateFormat.
• Create an object of Date class.
• Call the format() method of DateFormat class and pass the date object as a parameter to the method.

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yy HH:mm:ss");
Date dateobj = new Date();
System.out.println(df.format(dateobj));

2) Using Calendar class

• Specify the desired date/time. Similar to the step 1 of above method.
• Create an object of Calendar class by calling getInstance() method of it.
• Call the format() method of DateFormat and pass the Calendar.getTime() as a parameter to the method.

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yy HH:mm:ss");
Calendar calobj = Calendar.getInstance();
System.out.println(df.format(calobj.getTime()));

Complete java code for getting current date and time strong

import java.util.Date;
import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Calendar;

public class GettingCurrentDate {
   public static void main(String[] args) {
       //getting current date and time using Date class
       DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yy HH:mm:ss");
       Date dateobj = new Date();
       System.out.println(df.format(dateobj));

       /*getting current date time using calendar class 
        * An Alternative of above*/
       Calendar calobj = Calendar.getInstance();
       System.out.println(df.format(calobj.getTime()));
    }
}

Output:

02/01/14 20:21:16
02/01/14 20:21:16

Every time I run the above code it would fetch the current date and time.

Note: In order to get the output in above format I have specified the date/time pattern above (Note the first statement of the program DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yy HH:mm:ss"); you would get the output like:02-01-2014

However if you want the output in any other date format just modify the pattern accordingly. For e.g. To get the date only in dd-MM-yyyy format: replace the statement with this one: DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");

While specifying the pattern be careful with the case. For e.g. ‘s’ (small s) represents second while ‘S'(Capital s) represents Millisecond.

Here is the complete chart which will help you to define the pattern in SimpleDateFormat.

Letter	Date or Time Component	Presentation	Examples
G	Era designator	Text	AD
y	Year	Year	1996; 96
Y	Week year	Year	2009; 09
M	Month in year	Month	July; Jul; 07
w	Week in year	Number	27
W	Week in month	Number	2
D	Day in year	Number	189
d	Day in month	Number	10
F	Day of week in month	Number	2
E	Day name in week	Text	Tuesday; Tue
u	Day number of week (1 = Monday, …, 7 = Sunday)	Number	1
a	Am/pm marker	Text	PM
H	Hour in day (0-23)	Number	0
k	Hour in day (1-24)	Number	24
K	Hour in am/pm (0-11)	Number	0
h	Hour in am/pm (1-12)	Number	12
m	Minute in hour	Number	30
s	Second in minute	Number	55
S	Millisecond	Number	978
z	Time zone	General time zone	Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z	Time zone	RFC 822 time zone	-0800
X	Time zone	ISO 8601 time zone	-08; -0800; -08:00

References:

• Calendar javadoc
• Date javadoc
• SimpleDateFormat javadoc