Preserve file creation time with Java

Question

I wrote a little copy tool in java to copy .mp3 files on my USB stick. When new files are copied, some file attributes are preserved, but not the creation time.

To copy

Answer 1

If you are using Java 7+, you can use:

Files.copy(source, target, StandardCopyOption.COPY_ATTRIBUTES);

If that does not copy the creation time (it does on my machine), you can also manually set it:

Path source = ...;
Path target = ...;
Files.copy(source, target, StandardCopyOption.COPY_ATTRIBUTES);

FileTime creationTime  = (FileTime) Files.readAttributes(source, "creationTime").get("creationTime");
Files.setAttribute(target, "creationTime", creationTime);

Answer 2

Take a look at: http://docs.oracle.com/javase/tutorial/essential/io/fileAttr.html#basic

It's possible to get and set files attributes like creation time.