How to Get Today's Date?

Question

In other words, I want functionality that provides Joda-Time:

today = today.withTime(0, 0, 0, 0);

but without Joda-Time, only with java.util.Date.

Methods such as .setHours() and etc. are deprecated. Is there are more correct way?

Accepted Answer

Date today = new Date();
today.setHours(0); //same for minutes and seconds

Since the methods are deprecated, you can do this with Calendar:

Calendar today = Calendar.getInstance();
today.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0); // same for minutes and seconds

And if you need a Date object in the end, simply call today.getTime()

Answer 2

Date today = DateUtils.truncate(new Date(), Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH);

DateUtils from Apache Commons-Lang. Watch out for time zone!

Answer 3

Is there are more correct way?

Yes, there is.

LocalDate.now( 
    ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" ) 
).atStartOfDay(
    ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" )
)

java.time

Java 8 and later now has the new java.time framework built-in. See Tutorial. Inspired by Joda-Time, defined by JSR 310, and extended by the ThreeTen-Extra project.

Must Read

Examples

Some examples follow, using java.time. Note how they specify a time zone. If omitted, your JVM’s current default time zone. That default can vary, even changing at any moment during runtime, so I suggest you specify a time zone explicitly rather than rely implicitly on the default.

Here is an example of date-only, without time-of-day nor time zone.

ZoneId zonedId = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
LocalDate today = LocalDate.now( zonedId );
System.out.println( "today : " + today );

today : 2015-10-19

Here is an example of getting current date-time.

ZoneId zonedId = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.now( zonedId );
System.out.println( "zdt : " + zdt );

When run:

zdt : 2015-10-19T18:07:02.910-04:00[America/Montreal]

How to Get Today's Date?

8 Answers

java.time

Must Read

Examples

Elena Rostova