Get Today's date in Java at midnight time

Question

I need to create two date objects. If the current date and time is March 9th 2012 11:30 AM then

• date object d1 should be 9th March 20

Answer 1

Here is a Java 8 based solution, using the new java.time package (Tutorial).

If you can use Java 8 objects in your code, use LocalDateTime:

LocalDateTime now = LocalDateTime.now(); // current date and time
LocalDateTime midnight = now.toLocalDate().atStartOfDay();

If you require legacy dates, i.e. java.util.Date:

Convert the LocalDateTime you created above to Date using these conversions:

LocalDateTime -> ZonedDateTime -> Instant -> Date

1. Call atZone(zone) with a specified time-zone (or ZoneId.systemDefault() for the system default time-zone) to create a ZonedDateTime object, adjusted for DST as needed.

   ZonedDateTime zdt = midnight.atZone(ZoneId.of("America/Montreal"));
   

2. Call toInstant() to convert the ZonedDateTime to an Instant:

   Instant i = zdt.toInstant()
   

3. Finally, call Date.from(instant) to convert the Instant to a Date:

   Date d1 = Date.from(i)
   

In summary it will look similar to this for you:

LocalDateTime now = LocalDateTime.now(); // current date and time
LocalDateTime midnight = now.toLocalDate().atStartOfDay();
Date d1 = Date.from(midnight.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());
Date d2 = Date.from(now.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());

See also section Legacy Date-Time Code (The Java™ Tutorials) for interoperability of the new java.time functionality with legacy java.util classes.

Answer 2

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");    
Date date = new Date(); System.out.println(dateFormat.format(date));    //2014/08/06 15:59:4

Answer 3

private static Date truncateTime(Calendar cal) {
        cal.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0);
        cal.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
        cal.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
        cal.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
        return new Date(cal.getTime().getTime());
}
 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        Date d2 = new Date();
        GregorianCalendar cal = new GregorianCalendar();
        cal.setTime(d2);
        Date d1 = truncateTime( cal );
        System.out.println(d1.toString());
        System.out.println(d2.toString());
}

Answer 4

    Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar();
    c.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0); //anything 0 - 23
    c.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
    c.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
    Date d1 = c.getTime(); //the midnight, that's the first second of the day.

should be Fri Mar 09 00:00:00 IST 2012

Answer 5

If you are able to add external libs to your project. I would recommend that you try out Joda-time. It has a very clever way of working with dates.

http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/

Answer 6

Date date = new Date();
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm");
System.out.println(sdf.format(date));