Java Display Current Date and Time

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Java language has a Built in class called Date which is stored in the java.util.Date package. This class shows the current Time in miliseconds.

Need of Date and Time

• To display current date,time to user
• To Store the modifications in database of current instance
• To Display commented date and time in the blogs
• To make calender type application
• To find records using particular date

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Date class

If we directly create and display the object of date class, then we will get the output as

import java.util.Date;
public class DateEx 
{
	public static void main(String[] args) 
	{	
		Date date = new Date();	
		System.out.println(date);
	}
}

Output

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To display only required date or time we have following different methods

Date class Methods

Suppose we have two Date objects as

Date date1 = new Date(2018,10,18);

Date date2 = new Date(2020,5,18);

Method	Example	Output
boolean after(Date) This method tests if this date is after the specified date.	date2.after(date1)	true
boolean before(Date) This method tests if this date is before the specified date.	date2.before(date1);	false
boolean compareTo(Date) This method compares two dates. It returns 0 if both are equal.	date2.compareTo(date1)	false
long getTime() This method returns the time in miliseconds from January 1,1970, 00:00:00 GMT to current time	date2.getTime()	61550562600000
String toString() This method converts the Date object into string representation	date1.toString()	Mon Nov 18 00:00:00 IST 3918

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Displaying Formatted Date and Time

Java has DateFormat class to properly display the date and time

Example

import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
public class DateEx 
{
	
	public static void main(String[] args) 
	{	
		DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
		Date date1 = new Date();	
		System.out.println(format.format(date1));
	}
}

Output

Possible String arguments of SimpleDateFormat

• SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd") - Displays in given format
• SimpleDateFormat("yyyy") - Displays only year
• SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss") - Displays Current Time
• SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm") - Display Hours and Minutes only
• SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss") - Displays both Date and Time