Current Date and Time in Java

With Java, you can get the current date using two classesDate and Calendar. After you get the current date and time, use the SimpleDateFormat to convert them to an appropriate format.

Date and SimpleDateFormat

This piece of code returns the date in the format year/month/day and the current time in the format hour/minute/second. HH in uppercase returns the 24-hour time system.

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

Output

2015/07/22 18:36:43

Calendar and SimpleDateFormat

DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss"); 
Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(); 
System.out.println(format.format(calendar.getTime()));

Runtime:

2015/07/22 18:39:24

Let's see the full code for using the Date and Calendar with the format predefined by the SimpleDateFormat and display the result:

import java.text.DateFormat; 
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat; 
import java.util.Calendar; 
import java.util.Date; 

public class getCurrentDate {

 public static void main(String[] args) {
 
 DateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss a"); 
 //get current date
 Date date = new Date(); 
 System.out.println(format.format(date)); 
 
 //get current time
 Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance(); 
 System.out.println(format.format(calendar.getTime())); 
 }
}

Runtime:

2015-07-22 06:50:55 PM
2015-07-22 06:50:55 PM

The time format hh:mm:ss a returns the time system to 12 hours where the day is divided into two half-days of 12 hours each. AM for the period from midnight to noon and PM for the period from noon to midnight.