Java file time

last modified July 4, 2024

In this article we show how to determine file creation, last modification, and last access time in Java with Files and BasicFileAttributes.

Files

Files is a Java class that contains static methods that operate on files, directories, or other types of files. Mostly, these methods will delegate to the associated file system provider to perform the file operations.

BasicFileAttributes

BasicFileAttributes holds basic file attributes. These are attributes that are common to many file systems and consist of mandatory and optional file attributes, such as size of file creation time. BasicFileAttributes are retrieved with Files.readAttributes method.

File creation time

The file creation time in Java is retrieved with BasicFileAttributes.creationTime method.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes;

void main() throws IOException {

    String fileName = "/home/jano/words.txt";

    File myfile = new File(fileName);
    Path path = myfile.toPath();

    BasicFileAttributes fatr = Files.readAttributes(path,
            BasicFileAttributes.class);

    System.out.printf("File creation time: %s%n", fatr.creationTime());
}

This example prints the creation time of the specified file.

File last modification time

The BasicFileAttributes.lastModifiedTime method gets the last modification time of a file in Java.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes;

void main() throws IOException {

    String fileName = "/home/jano/words.txt";

    File myfile = new File(fileName);
    Path path = myfile.toPath();

    BasicFileAttributes fatr = Files.readAttributes(path,
            BasicFileAttributes.class);

    System.out.printf("Last modification time: %s%n", fatr.lastModifiedTime());
}

This example prints the last modification time of the specified file.

File last access time

The last access time of a file in Java is retrieved with BasicFileAttributes.lastAccessTime method.

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.Path;
import java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes;

void main() throws IOException {

    String fileName = "/home/jano/words.txt";

    File myfile = new File(fileName);
    Path path = myfile.toPath();

    BasicFileAttributes fatr = Files.readAttributes(path,
            BasicFileAttributes.class);

    System.out.printf("Last access time: %s%n", fatr.lastAccessTime());
}

This example prints the last access time of the specified file.

Source

Java Basic I/O - tutorial

In this article we have determined the file creation, last modification, and last access time with Files and BasicFileAttributes.

Author

My name is Jan Bodnar and I am a passionate programmer with many years of programming experience. I have been writing programming articles since 2007. So far, I have written over 1400 articles and 8 e-books. I have over eight years of experience in teaching programming.

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