How to get today's Date?

In other words, I want functionality that provides Joda-Time:

today = today.withTime(0, 0, 0, 0);

but without Joda-Time, only with java.util.Date.

Methods such as .setHours() and etc. are deprecated. Is there are more correct way?

Solution 1:

Date today = new Date();
today.setHours(0); //same for minutes and seconds

Since the methods are deprecated, you can do this with Calendar:

Calendar today = Calendar.getInstance();
today.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0); // same for minutes and seconds

And if you need a Date object in the end, simply call today.getTime()

Solution 2:

Date today = DateUtils.truncate(new Date(), Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH);

DateUtils from Apache Commons-Lang. Watch out for time zone!

Solution 3:

Is there are more correct way?

Yes, there is.

LocalDate.now( 
    ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" ) 
).atStartOfDay(
    ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" )
)

java.time

Java 8 and later now has the new java.time framework built-in. See Tutorial. Inspired by Joda-Time, defined by JSR 310, and extended by the ThreeTen-Extra project.

Examples

Some examples follow, using java.time. Note how they specify a time zone. If omitted, your JVM’s current default time zone. That default can vary, even changing at any moment during runtime, so I suggest you specify a time zone explicitly rather than rely implicitly on the default.

Here is an example of date-only, without time-of-day nor time zone.

ZoneId zonedId = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
LocalDate today = LocalDate.now( zonedId );
System.out.println( "today : " + today );

today : 2015-10-19

Here is an example of getting current date-time.

ZoneId zonedId = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
ZonedDateTime zdt = ZonedDateTime.now( zonedId );
System.out.println( "zdt : " + zdt );

When run:

zdt : 2015-10-19T18:07:02.910-04:00[America/Montreal]

First Moment Of The Day

The Question asks for the date-time where the time is set to zero. This assumes the first moment of the day is always the time 00:00:00.0 but that is not always the case. Daylight Saving Time (DST) and perhaps other anomalies mean the day may begin at a different time such as 01:00.0.

Fortunately, java.time has a facility to determine the first moment of a day appropriate to a particular time zone, LocalDate::atStartOfDay. Let's see some code using the LocalDate named today and the ZoneId named zoneId from code above.

ZonedDateTime todayStart = today.atStartOfDay( zoneId );

zdt : 2015-10-19T00:00:00-04:00[America/Montreal]

Interoperability

If you must have a java.util.Date for use with classes not yet updated to work with the java.time types, convert. Call the java.util.Date.from( Instant instant ) method.

java.util.Date date = java.util.Date.from( zdt.toInstant() );

About java.time

The java.time framework is built into Java 8 and later. These classes supplant the troublesome old legacy date-time classes such as java.util.Date, Calendar, & SimpleDateFormat.

The Joda-Time project, now in maintenance mode, advises migration to the java.time classes.

To learn more, see the Oracle Tutorial. And search Stack Overflow for many examples and explanations. Specification is JSR 310.

You may exchange java.time objects directly with your database. Use a JDBC driver compliant with JDBC 4.2 or later. No need for strings, no need for java.sql.* classes.

Where to obtain the java.time classes?

• Java SE 8, Java SE 9, Java SE 10, Java SE 11, and later - Part of the standard Java API with a bundled implementation.
  • Java 9 adds some minor features and fixes.
• Java SE 6 and Java SE 7
  • Most of the java.time functionality is back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport.
• Android
  • Later versions of Android bundle implementations of the java.time classes.
  • For earlier Android (<26), the ThreeTenABP project adapts ThreeTen-Backport (mentioned above). See How to use ThreeTenABP….

The ThreeTen-Extra project extends java.time with additional classes. This project is a proving ground for possible future additions to java.time. You may find some useful classes here such as Interval, YearWeek, YearQuarter, and more.