Java Date – Nextra

Java Date and Time

Java Dates

Java does not have a built-in Date class, but we can import the java.time package to work with the date and time API. The package includes many date and time classes. For example:

Class	Description
`LocalDate`	Represents a date (year, month, day `yyyy-MM-dd`)
`LocalTime`	Represents a time (hour, minute, second and nanoseconds `HH-mm-ss-ns`)
`LocalDateTime`	Represents both a date and a time (`yyyy-MM-dd-HH-mm-ss-ns`)
`DateTimeFormatter`	Formatter for displaying and parsing date-time objects

If you don't know what a package is, read our Java Packages Tutorial.

Display Current Date

To display the current date, import the java.time.LocalDate class, and use its now() method:

import java.time.LocalDate; // import the LocalDate class
 
public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    LocalDate myObj = LocalDate.now(); // Create a date object
    System.out.println(myObj); // Display the current date
  }
}

The output will be:

2025-02-25

Display Current Time

To display the current time (hour, minute, second, and nanoseconds), import the java.time.LocalTime class, and use its now() method:

import java.time.LocalTime; // import the LocalTime class
 
public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    LocalTime myObj = LocalTime.now();
    System.out.println(myObj);
  }
}

This example displays the server's local time, which may differ from your local time:

19:31:52.292674

Display Current Date and Time

To display the current date and time, import the java.time.LocalDateTime class, and use its now() method:

import java.time.LocalDateTime; // import the LocalDateTime class
 
public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    LocalDateTime myObj = LocalDateTime.now();
    System.out.println(myObj);
  }
}

The output will be something like this:

2025-02-25T19:31:52.292914

Formatting Date and Time

The "T" in the example above is used to separate the date from the time. You can use the DateTimeFormatter class with the ofPattern() method in the same package to format or parse date-time objects. The following example will remove both the "T" and nanoseconds from the date-time:

import java.time.LocalDateTime; // Import the LocalDateTime class
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter; // Import the DateTimeFormatter class
 
public class Main {
  public static void main(String[] args) {
    LocalDateTime myDateObj = LocalDateTime.now();
    System.out.println("Before formatting: " + myDateObj);
    DateTimeFormatter myFormatObj = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss");
 
    String formattedDate = myDateObj.format(myFormatObj);
    System.out.println("After formatting: " + formattedDate);
  }
}

The output will be:

Before Formatting: 2025-02-25T19:31:52.293298
After Formatting: 25-02-2025 19:31:52

The ofPattern() method accepts all sorts of values if you want to display the date and time in a different format. For example:

Value	Example
`yyyy-MM-dd`	"1988-09-29"
`dd/MM/yyyy`	"29/09/1988"
`dd-MMM-yyyy`	"29-Sep-1988"
`E, MMM dd yyyy`	"Thu, Sep 29 1988"

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