Getting the Time component of a Java Date or Calen

Question

Is there a simple or elegant way to grab only the time of day (hours/minutes/seconds/milliseconds) part of a Java Date (or Calendar, it really doesn't matter to me)? I'm looking for a nice way to separately consider the date (year/month/day) and the time-of-day parts, but as far as I can tell, I'm stuck with accessing each field separately.

I know I could write my own method to individually grab the fields I'm interested, but I'd be doing it as a static utility method, which is ugly. Also, I know that Date and Calendar objects have millisecond precision, but I don't see a way to access the milliseconds component in either case.

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Edit: I wasn't clear about this: using one of the Date::getTime() or Calendar::getTimeInMillis is not terribly useful to me, since those return the number of milliseconds since the epoch (represented by that Date or Calendar), which does not actually separate the time of day from the rest of the information.

@Jherico's answer is the closest thing, I think, but definitely is something I'd still have to roll into a method I write myself. It's not exactly what I'm going for, since it still includes hours, minutes, and seconds in the returned millisecond value - though I could probably make it work for my purposes.

I still think of each component as separate, although of course, they're not. You can write a time as the number of milliseconds since an arbitrary reference date, or you could write the exact same time as year/month/day hours:minutes:seconds.milliseconds.

This is not for display purposes. I know how to use a DateFormat to make pretty date strings.

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Edit 2: My original question arose from a small set of utility functions I found myself writing - for instance:

• Checking whether two Dates represent a date-time on the same day;
• Checking whether a date is within a range specified by two other dates, but sometimes checking inclusively, and sometimes not, depending on the time component.

Does Joda Time have this type of functionality?

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Edit 3: @Jon's question regarding my second requirement, just to clarify: The second requirement is a result of using my Dates to sometimes represent entire days - where the time component doesn't matter at all - and sometimes represent a date-time (which is, IMO, the most accurate word for something that contains year/month/day and hours:minutes:seconds:...).

When a Date represents an entire day, its time parts are zero (e.g. the Date's "time component" is midnight) but the semantics dictate that the range check is done inclusively on the end date. Because I just leave this check up to Date::before and Date::after, I have to add 1 day to the end date - hence the special-casing for when the time-of-day component of a Date is zero.

Hope that didn't make things less clear.

Answer 1

Find below a solution which employs Joda Time and supports time zones. So, you will obtain date and time (into currentDate and currentTime) in the currently configured timezone in the JVM.

Please notice that Joda Time does not support leap seconds. So, you can be some 26 or 27 seconds off the true value. This probably will only be solved in the next 50 years, when the accumulated error will be closer to 1 min and people will start to care about it.

See also: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leap_second

/**
 * This class splits the current date/time (now!) and an informed date/time into their components:
 * <lu>
 *     <li>schedulable: if the informed date/time is in the present (now!) or in future.</li>
 *     <li>informedDate: the date (only) part of the informed date/time</li>
 *     <li>informedTime: the time (only) part of the informed date/time</li>
 *     <li>currentDate: the date (only) part of the current date/time (now!)</li>
 *     <li>currentTime: the time (only) part of the current date/time (now!)</li>
 * </lu>
 */
public class ScheduleDateTime {
    public final boolean schedulable;
    public final long millis;
    public final java.util.Date informedDate;
    public final java.util.Date informedTime;
    public final java.util.Date currentDate;
    public final java.util.Date currentTime;

    public ScheduleDateTime(long millis) {
        final long now = System.currentTimeMillis();
        this.schedulable = (millis > -1L) && (millis >= now);

        final TimeZoneUtils tz = new TimeZoneUtils();

        final java.util.Date          dmillis   = new java.util.Date( (millis > -1L) ? millis : now );
        final java.time.ZonedDateTime zdtmillis = java.time.ZonedDateTime.ofInstant(dmillis.toInstant(), java.time.ZoneId.systemDefault());
        final java.util.Date          zdmillis  = java.util.Date.from(tz.tzdate(zdtmillis));
        final java.util.Date          ztmillis  = new java.util.Date(tz.tztime(zdtmillis));

        final java.util.Date          dnow   = new java.util.Date(now);
        final java.time.ZonedDateTime zdtnow = java.time.ZonedDateTime.ofInstant(dnow.toInstant(), java.time.ZoneId.systemDefault());
        final java.util.Date          zdnow  = java.util.Date.from(tz.tzdate(zdtnow));
        final java.util.Date          ztnow  = new java.util.Date(tz.tztime(zdtnow));

        this.millis       = millis;
        this.informedDate = zdmillis;
        this.informedTime = ztmillis;
        this.currentDate  = zdnow;
        this.currentTime  = ztnow;
    }
}



public class TimeZoneUtils {

    public java.time.Instant tzdate() {
        final java.time.ZonedDateTime zdtime = java.time.ZonedDateTime.now();
        return tzdate(zdtime);
    }
    public java.time.Instant tzdate(java.time.ZonedDateTime zdtime) {
        final java.time.ZonedDateTime zddate = zdtime.truncatedTo(java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit.DAYS);
        final java.time.Instant instant = zddate.toInstant();
        return instant;
    }

    public long tztime() {
        final java.time.ZonedDateTime zdtime = java.time.ZonedDateTime.now();
        return tztime(zdtime);
     }
    public long tztime(java.time.ZonedDateTime zdtime) {
        final java.time.ZonedDateTime zddate = zdtime.truncatedTo(java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit.DAYS);
        final long millis = zddate.until(zdtime, java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit.MILLIS);
        return millis;
    }
}

Answer 2

To get just the time using Joda-Time, use the org.joda.time.LocalTime class as described in this question, Joda-Time, Time without date.

As for comparing dates only while effectively ignoring time, in Joda-Time call the withTimeAtStartOfDay() method on each DateTime instance to set an identical time value. Here is some example code using Joda-Time 2.3, similar to what I posted on another answer today.

    // © 2013 Basil Bourque. This source code may be used freely forever by anyone taking full responsibility for doing so.

    // Joda-Time - The popular alternative to Sun/Oracle's notoriously bad date, time, and calendar classes bundled with Java 7 and earlier.
    // http://www.joda.org/joda-time/

    // Joda-Time will become outmoded by the JSR 310 Date and Time API introduced in Java 8.
    // JSR 310 was inspired by Joda-Time but is not directly based on it.
    // http://jcp.org/en/jsr/detail?id=310

    // By default, Joda-Time produces strings in the standard ISO 8601 format.
    // https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601

    // Capture one moment in time.
    org.joda.time.DateTime now = new org.joda.time.DateTime();
    System.out.println("Now: " + now);

    // Calculate approximately same time yesterday.
    org.joda.time.DateTime yesterday = now.minusDays(1);
    System.out.println("Yesterday: " + yesterday);

    // Compare dates. A DateTime includes time (hence the name).
    // So effectively eliminate the time by setting to start of day.
    Boolean isTodaySameDateAsYesterday = now.withTimeAtStartOfDay().isEqual(yesterday.withTimeAtStartOfDay());
    System.out.println("Is today same date as yesterday: " + isTodaySameDateAsYesterday);

    org.joda.time.DateTime halloweenInUnitedStates = new org.joda.time.DateTime(2013, 10, 31, 0, 0);
    Boolean isFirstMomentSameDateAsHalloween = now.withTimeAtStartOfDay().isEqual(halloweenInUnitedStates.withTimeAtStartOfDay());
    System.out.println("Is now the same date as Halloween in the US: " + isFirstMomentSameDateAsHalloween);

Answer 3

If all you're worried about is getting it into a String for display or saving, then just create a SimpleDateFormat that only displays the time portion, like new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss"). The date is still in the Date object, of course, but you don't care.

If you want to do arithmetic on it, like take two Date objects and find how many seconds apart they are while ignoring the date portion, so that "2009-09-01 11:00:00" minus "1941-12-07 09:00:00" equals 2 hours, then I think you need to use a solution like Jherico's: get the long time and take it module 1 day.

Answer 4

tl;dr

LocalTime lt = myUtilDate.toInstant().atZone( ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" ) ).toLocalTime() ;

Avoid old date-time classes

You are using old legacy date-time classes. They are troublesome and confusing; avoid them.

Instead use java.time classes. These supplant the old classes as well as the Joda-Time library.

Convert

Convert your java.util.Date to an Instant.

The Instant class represents a moment on the timeline in UTC with a resolution of nanoseconds.

Instant instant = myUtilDate.toInstant();

Time Zone

Apply a time zone. Time zone is crucial. For any given moment the date varies around the globe by zone. For example, a few minutes after midnight in Paris France is a new day while also being “yesterday” in Montréal Québec.

Apply a ZoneId to get a ZonedDateTime object.

ZoneId z = ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" );
ZonedDateTime zdt = instant.atZone( z );

Local… types

The LocalDate class represents a date-only value without time-of-day and without time zone. Likewise, the LocalTime represents a time-of-day without a date and without a time zone. You can think of these as two components which along with a ZoneId make up a ZonedDateTime. You can extract these from a ZonedDateTime.

LocalDate ld = zdt.toLocalDate();
LocalTime lt = zdt.toLocalTime();

Strings

If your goal is merely generating Strings for presentation to the user, no need for the Local… types. Instead, use DateTimeFormatter to generate strings representing only the date-portion or the time-portion. That class is smart enough to automatically localize while generating the String.

Specify a Locale to determine (a) the human language used for translating name of day, name of month, and such, and (b) the cultural norms for deciding issues such as abbreviation, capitalization, punctuation, and such.

Locale l = Locale.CANADA_FRENCH ;  // Or Locale.US, Locale.ITALY, etc.

DateTimeFormatter fDate = DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedDate( FormatStyle.MEDIUM ).withLocale( locale );
String outputDate = zdt.format( fDate );

DateTimeFormatter fTime = DateTimeFormatter.ofLocalizedTime( FormatStyle.MEDIUM ).withLocale( locale );
String outputTime = zdt.format( fTime );

About java.time

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

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

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

Much of the java.time functionality is back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport and further adapted to Android in ThreeTenABP (see How to use…).

The ThreeTen-Extra project extends java.time with additional classes. This project is a proving ground for possible future additions to java.time.

Answer 5

You can call the getTimeInMillis() function on a Calendar object to get the time in milliseconds. You can call get(Calendar.MILLISECOND) on a calendar object to get the milliseconds of the second. If you want to display the time from a Date or Calendar object, use the DateFormat class. Example: DateFormat.getTimeInstance().format(now). There is also a SimpleDateFormat class that you can use.

Answer 6

Why do you want to separate them? If you mean to do any arithmetic with the time portion, you will quickly get into trouble. If you pull out 11:59pm and add a minute, now that your time and day are separate, you've screwed yourself--you'll have an invalid time and an incorrect date.

If you just want to display them, then applying various simple date format's should get you exactly what you want.

If you want to manipulate the date, I suggest you get the long values and base everything off of that. At any point you can take that long and apply a format to get the minutes/hours/seconds to display pretty easily.

But I'm just a little concerned with the concept of manipulating day and time separately, seems like opening a can o' worms. (Not to even mention time zone problems!).

I'm fairly sure this is why Java doesn't have an easy way to do this.