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.