Date and Time in Java

This section contains the detail about the date and time in java.

Date and Time in Java

The 'java.util' package contains date class which contains current date and time.

Getting current Date and Time

For getting current date and time , you need to first initialize the object of class date. After creating it's object you can print it using 'tostring( )' method.

Example :

import java.util.Date;

public class DateDemo {
public static void main(String args[]) {
// Instantiate a Date object
Date date = new Date();

// display time and date using toString()
System.out.println(date.toString());
}
}

Output :

Date Formatting using SimpleDateFormat

The SimpleDateFormat is a class for format and parse date in a locale-sensitive manner. Any user can use it's predefine character codes to create it's own pattern for formatting date-time as follows :

Example :

import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;

class DateDemo {
   public static void main(String args[]) {

       Date dNow = new Date( );
       SimpleDateFormat ft = 
       new SimpleDateFormat ("E yyyy.MM.dd 'at' hh:mm:ss a zzz");

       System.out.println("Current Date: " + ft.format(dNow));
   }
}

Output :

In this code :

'E' means - Day in week

'y', 'm' & 'd' means - year, month & date respectively.

'h', 'm', 's' means - hour, minutes & second respectively.

'a' means -  A.M./P.M. marker.

'z' means - Time zone.

Date Formatting using printf :

We can also format date and time using printf. In this approach, we are using a two letter format starting with t and ending in one of the letters of the table given below. For example :

import java.util.Date;

class DateDemoBasic {
public static void main(String args[]) {
// Instantiate a Date object
Date date = new Date();

// display time and date using toString()
System.out.printf("%tc", "Current Time : ", date);
}
}

Output :

For formatting separate parts, it also has separate two letter codes which is also given below table. Given below the program for separate formatting :

import java.util.Date;

class DateDemo {
public static void main(String args[]) {
// Instantiate a Date object
Date date = new Date();

// display time and date using toString()
System.out.printf("%1$s %2$tB %2$td, %2$tY", 
"Due date:", date);
}

Output :

Date and Time Conversion Characters :

There are other useful classes related to Date and time. For more detail you can refer to Java Standard documentation.

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