how to create a Java Date object of midnight today

Question

In my code I need to find all my things that happened today. So I need to compare against dates from today at 00:00am (midnight early this morning) to 12:00pm (midnight tonight).

I know ...

Date today = new Date(); 

... gets me right now. And ...

Date beginning = new Date(0);

... gets me zero time on Jan 1, 1970. But what's an easy way to get zero time today and zero time tomorrow?

UPDATE; I did this, but surely there's an easier way?

Calendar calStart = new GregorianCalendar();
calStart.setTime(new Date());
calStart.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0);
calStart.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
calStart.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
calStart.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
Date midnightYesterday = calStart.getTime();

Calendar calEnd = new GregorianCalendar();
calEnd.setTime(new Date());
calEnd.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, calEnd.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR)+1);
calEnd.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0);
calEnd.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
calEnd.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
calEnd.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
Date midnightTonight = calEnd.getTime();

Answer 1

Date now= new Date();
// Today midnight
Date todayMidnight = new Date(endTime.getTime() -endTime.getTime()%DateUtils.MILLIS_PER_DAY);

// tomorrow midnight
Date tomorrowMidnight = new Date(endTime.getTime() -endTime.getTime()%DateUtils.MILLIS_PER_DAY + DateUtils.MILLIS_PER_DAY);

Answer 2

Apache Commons Lang

DateUtils.isSameDay(date1, date2)

http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/javadocs/api-2.6/org/apache/commons/lang/time/DateUtils.html#isSameDay(java.util.Date, java.util.Date)

Answer 3

java.util.Calendar

// today    
Calendar date = new GregorianCalendar();
// reset hour, minutes, seconds and millis
date.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0);
date.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
date.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
date.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);

// next day
date.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1);

---

JDK 8 - java.time.LocalTime and java.time.LocalDate

LocalTime midnight = LocalTime.MIDNIGHT;
LocalDate today = LocalDate.now(ZoneId.of("Europe/Berlin"));
LocalDateTime todayMidnight = LocalDateTime.of(today, midnight);
LocalDateTime tomorrowMidnight = todayMidnight.plusDays(1);

---

Joda-Time

If you're using a JDK < 8, I recommend Joda Time, because the API is really nice:

DateTime date = new DateTime().toDateMidnight().toDateTime();
DateTime tomorrow = date.plusDays(1);

Since version 2.3 of Joda Time DateMidnight is deprecated, so use this:

DateTime today = new DateTime().withTimeAtStartOfDay();
DateTime tomorrow = today.plusDays(1).withTimeAtStartOfDay();

Pass a time zone if you don't want the JVM’s current default time zone.

DateTimeZone timeZone = DateTimeZone.forID("America/Montreal");
DateTime today = new DateTime(timeZone).withTimeAtStartOfDay(); // Pass time zone to constructor.

Answer 4

Remember, Date is not used to represent dates (!). To represent date you need a calendar. This:

Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar();

will create a Calendar instance representing present date in your current time zone. Now what you need is to truncate every field below day (hour, minute, second and millisecond) by setting it to 0. You now have a midnight today.

Now to get midnight next day, you need to add one day:

c.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1);

Note that adding 86400 seconds or 24 hours is incorrect due to summer time that might occur in the meantime.

UPDATE: However my favourite way to deal with this problem is to use DateUtils class from Commons Lang:

Date start = DateUtils.truncate(new Date(), Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH))
Date end = DateUtils.addDays(start, 1);

It uses Calendar behind the scenes...

Answer 5

these methods will help you-

public static Date getStartOfDay(Date date) {
     Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
     calendar.setTime(date);
     calendar.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0);
     calendar.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
     calendar.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
     calendar.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
     return calendar.getTime();
 }

and

public static Date getEndOfDay(Date date) {
    Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
    calendar.setTime(date);
    calendar.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 23);
    calendar.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 59);
    calendar.set(Calendar.SECOND, 59);
    calendar.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 999);
    return calendar.getTime();
}

Answer 6

As of JodaTime 2.3, the toDateMidnight() is deprecated.

From Upgrade from 2.2 to 2.3

    Deprecations since 2.2
    ----------------------
    - DateMidnight [#41]
     This class is flawed in concept
     The time of midnight occasionally does not occur in some time-zones
     This is a result of a daylight savings time from 00:00 to 01:00
     DateMidnight is essentially a DateTime with a time locked to midnight
     Such a concept is more generally a poor one to use, given LocalDate
     Replace DateMidnight with LocalDate
     Or replace it with DateTime, perhaps using the withTimeAtStartOfDay() method

Here is a sample code without toDateMidnight() method.

Code

DateTime todayAtMidnight = new DateTime().withTimeAtStartOfDay();
System.out.println(todayAtMidnight.toString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"));

Output (may be different depending on your local time zone)

2013-09-28 00:00:00