Set time to 00:00:00

Question

I have a problem resetting hours in Java. For a given date I want to set the hours to 00:00:00.

This is my code :

/**
     * Resets milliseconds, se         


        

Answer 1

tl;dr

myJavaUtilDate                                 // The terrible `java.util.Date` class is now legacy. Use *java.time* instead.
.toInstant()                                   // Convert this moment in UTC from the legacy class `Date` to the modern class `Instant`.
.atZone( ZoneId.of( "Africa/Tunis" ) )         // Adjust from UTC to the wall-clock time used by the people of a particular region (a time zone).
.toLocalDate()                                 // Extract the date-only portion.
.atStartOfDay( ZoneId.of( "Africa/Tunis" ) )   // Determine the first moment of that date in that zone. The day does *not* always start at 00:00:00.

java.time

You are using terrible old date-time classes that were supplanted years ago by the modern java.time classes defined in JSR 310.

Date ➙ Instant

A java.util.Date represent a moment in UTC. Its replacement is Instant. Call the new conversion methods added to the old classes.

Instant instant = myJavaUtilDate.toInstant() ;

Time zone

Specify the time zone in which you want your new time-of-day to make sense.

Specify a proper time zone name in the format of Continent/Region, such as America/Montreal, Africa/Casablanca, or Pacific/Auckland. Never use the 2-4 letter abbreviation such as EST or IST as they are not true time zones, not standardized, and not even unique(!).

ZoneId z = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" ) ;

ZonedDateTime

Apply the ZoneId to the Instant to get a ZonedDateTime. Same moment, same point on the timeline, but different wall-clock time.

ZonedDateTime zdt = instant.atZone( z ) ;

Changing time-of-day

You asked to change the time-of-day. Apply a LocalTime to change all the time-of-day parts: hour, minute, second, fractional second. A new ZonedDateTime is instantiated, with values based on the original. The java.time classes use this immutable objects pattern to provide thread-safety.

LocalTime lt = LocalTime.of( 15 , 30 ) ;  // 3:30 PM.
ZonedDateTime zdtAtThreeThirty = zdt.with( lt ) ; 

First moment of day

But you asked specifically for 00:00. So apparently you want the first moment of the day. Beware: some days in some zones do not start at 00:00:00. They may start at another time such as 01:00:00 because of anomalies such as Daylight Saving Time (DST).

Let java.time determine the first moment. Extract the date-only portion. Then pass the time zone to get first moment.

LocalDate ld = zdt.toLocalDate() ;
ZonedDateTime zdtFirstMomentOfDay = ld.atStartOfDay( z ) ;

Adjust to UTC

If you need to go back to UTC, extract an Instant.

Instant instant = zdtFirstMomentOfDay.toInstant() ;

Instant ➙ Date

If you need a java.util.Date to interoperate with old code not yet updated to java.time, convert.

java.util.Date d = java.util.Date.from( instant ) ;