Determine file creation date in Java

Solution 1:

Java nio has options to access creationTime and other meta-data as long as the filesystem provides it. Check this link out

For example (provided based on @ydaetskcoR's comment):

Path file = ...;
BasicFileAttributes attr = Files.readAttributes(file.toPath(), BasicFileAttributes.class);

System.out.println("creationTime: " + attr.creationTime());
System.out.println("lastAccessTime: " + attr.lastAccessTime());
System.out.println("lastModifiedTime: " + attr.lastModifiedTime());

Solution 2:

I've solved this problem using JDK 7 with this code:

package FileCreationDate;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.concurrent.TimeUnit;

public class Main
{
    public static void main(String[] args) {

        File file = new File("c:\\1.txt");
        Path filePath = file.toPath();

        BasicFileAttributes attributes = null;
        try
        {
            attributes =
                    Files.readAttributes(filePath, BasicFileAttributes.class);
        }
        catch (IOException exception)
        {
            System.out.println("Exception handled when trying to get file " +
                    "attributes: " + exception.getMessage());
        }
        long milliseconds = attributes.creationTime().to(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS);
        if((milliseconds > Long.MIN_VALUE) && (milliseconds < Long.MAX_VALUE))
        {
            Date creationDate =
                    new Date(attributes.creationTime().to(TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS));

            System.out.println("File " + filePath.toString() + " created " +
                    creationDate.getDate() + "/" +
                    (creationDate.getMonth() + 1) + "/" +
                    (creationDate.getYear() + 1900));
        }
    }
}

Solution 3:

As a follow-up to this question - since it relates specifically to creation time and discusses obtaining it via the new nio classes - it seems right now in JDK7's implementation you're out of luck. Addendum: same behaviour is in OpenJDK7.

On Unix filesystems you cannot retrieve the creation timestamp, you simply get a copy of the last modification time. So sad, but unfortunately true. I'm not sure why that is but the code specifically does that as the following will demonstrate.

import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.*;
import java.nio.file.attribute.*;

public class TestFA {
  static void getAttributes(String pathStr) throws IOException {
    Path p = Paths.get(pathStr);
    BasicFileAttributes view
       = Files.getFileAttributeView(p, BasicFileAttributeView.class)
              .readAttributes();
    System.out.println(view.creationTime()+" is the same as "+view.lastModifiedTime());
  }
  public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
    for (String s : args) {
        getAttributes(s);
    }
  }
}