How do I measure time elapsed in Java? [duplicate]

Answer 1

Which types to use in order to accomplish this in Java?

The short answer is a long. Now, more on how to measure...

System.currentTimeMillis()

The "traditional" way to do this is indeed to use System.currentTimeMillis():

long startTime = System.currentTimeMillis();
// ... do something ...
long estimatedTime = System.currentTimeMillis() - startTime;

o.a.c.l.t.StopWatch

Note that Commons Lang has a StopWatch class that can be used to measure execution time in milliseconds. It has methods methods like split(), suspend(), resume(), etc that allow to take measure at different points of the execution and that you may find convenient. Have a look at it.

System.nanoTime()

You may prefer to use System.nanoTime() if you are looking for extremely precise measurements of elapsed time. From its javadoc:

long startTime = System.nanoTime();    
// ... the code being measured ...    
long estimatedTime = System.nanoTime() - startTime;

Jamon

Another option would be to use JAMon, a tool that gathers statistics (execution time, number of hit, average execution time, min, max, etc) for any code that comes between start() and stop() methods. Below, a very simple example:

import com.jamonapi.*;
...
Monitor mon=MonitorFactory.start("myFirstMonitor");
...Code Being Timed...
mon.stop();

Check out this article on www.javaperformancetunning.com for a nice introduction.

Using AOP

Finally, if you don't want to clutter your code with these measurement (or if you can't change existing code), then AOP would be a perfect weapon. I'm not going to discuss this very deeply but I wanted at least to mention it.

Below, a very simple aspect using AspectJ and JAMon (here, the short name of the pointcut will be used for the JAMon monitor, hence the call to thisJoinPoint.toShortString()):

public aspect MonitorAspect {
    pointcut monitor() : execution(* *.ClassToMonitor.methodToMonitor(..));

    Object arround() : monitor() {
        Monitor monitor = MonitorFactory.start(thisJoinPoint.toShortString());
        Object returnedObject = proceed();
        monitor.stop();
        return returnedObject;
    }
}

The pointcut definition could be easily adapted to monitor any method based on the class name, the package name, the method name, or any combination of these. Measurement is really a perfect use case for AOP.

Answer 2

If the purpose is to simply print coarse timing information to your program logs, then the easy solution for Java projects is not to write your own stopwatch or timer classes, but just use the org.apache.commons.lang.time.StopWatch class that is part of Apache Commons Lang.

final StopWatch stopwatch = new StopWatch();
stopwatch.start();
LOGGER.debug("Starting long calculations: {}", stopwatch);
...
LOGGER.debug("Time after key part of calcuation: {}", stopwatch);
...
LOGGER.debug("Finished calculating {}", stopwatch);

Answer 3

Java provides the static method System.currentTimeMillis(). And that's returning a long value, so it's a good reference. A lot of other classes accept a 'timeInMillis' parameter which is long as well.

And a lot of people find it easier to use the Joda Time library to do calculations on dates and times.

Answer 4

If you're getting your timestamps from System.currentTimeMillis(), then your time variables should be longs.

Answer 5

If you prefer using Java's Calendar API you can try this,

Date startingTime = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();
//later on
Date now = Calendar.getInstance().getTime();
long timeElapsed = now.getTime() - startingTime.getTime();

Answer 6

If you are writing an application that must deal with durations of time, then please take a look at Joda-Time which has class specifically for handling Durations, Intervals, and Periods. Your getDuration() method looks like it could return a Joda-Time Interval:

DateTime start = new DateTime(2004, 12, 25, 0, 0, 0, 0);
DateTime end = new DateTime(2005, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0);

public Interval getInterval() {
    Interval interval = new Interval(start, end);
}