Get Today's date in Java at midnight time

I need to create two date objects. If the current date and time is March 9th 2012 11:30 AM then

> - date object d1 should be 9th March 2012 12:00 AM > - date object d2 should contain the current date itself

The date will not be entered, it is system date.

Update:

Date dt = new Date();
System.out.print(dt.toString());

gives current date and time

	Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar();
	c.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0); //anything 0 - 23
	c.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
	c.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
	Date d1 = c.getTime(); //the midnight, that's the first second of the day.

should be Fri Mar 09 00:00:00 IST 2012

Date date = new Date();
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm");
System.out.println(sdf.format(date));

Here is a Java 8 based solution, using the new java.time package (Tutorial).

If you can use Java 8 objects in your code, use LocalDateTime:

LocalDateTime now = LocalDateTime.now(); // current date and time
LocalDateTime midnight = now.toLocalDate().atStartOfDay();

If you require legacy dates, i.e. java.util.Date:

Convert the LocalDateTime you created above to Date using these conversions:

> LocalDateTime -> ZonedDateTime -> Instant -> Date

1. Call atZone(zone) with a specified time-zone (or ZoneId.systemDefault() for the system default time-zone) to create a ZonedDateTime object, adjusted for DST as needed.

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

2. Call toInstant() to convert the ZonedDateTime to an Instant:

   Instant i = zdt.toInstant()

3. Finally, call Date.from(instant) to convert the Instant to a Date:

   Date d1 = Date.from(i)

In summary it will look similar to this for you:

LocalDateTime now = LocalDateTime.now(); // current date and time
LocalDateTime midnight = now.toLocalDate().atStartOfDay();
Date d1 = Date.from(midnight.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());
Date d2 = Date.from(now.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());

See also section Legacy Date-Time Code (The Java™ Tutorials) for interoperability of the new java.time functionality with legacy java.util classes.

Calendar currentDate = Calendar.getInstance(); //Get the current date
SimpleDateFormat formatter= new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MMM/dd HH:mm:ss"); //format it as per your requirement
String dateNow = formatter.format(currentDate.getTime());
System.out.println("Now the date is :=>  " + dateNow);

If you are able to add external libs to your project. I would recommend that you try out Joda-time. It has a very clever way of working with dates.

http://joda-time.sourceforge.net/

Using org.apache.commons.lang3.time.DateUtils

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

A solution in Java 8:

Date startOfToday = Date.from(ZonedDateTime.now().with(LocalTime.MIN).toInstant());

For Current Date and Time :

String mydate = java.text.DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance().format(Calendar.getInstance().getTime());

This will shown as :

Feb 5, 2013 12:40:24PM

Here is a Java 8 way to get UTC Midnight in millis

ZonedDateTime utcTime = ZonedDateTime.now(ZoneOffset.UTC);
long todayMidnight = utcTime.toLocalDate().atStartOfDay().toEpochSecond(ZoneOffset.UTC) * 1000;

private static Date truncateTime(Calendar cal) {
        cal.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0);
        cal.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
        cal.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
        cal.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
        return new Date(cal.getTime().getTime());
}
 public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
        Date d2 = new Date();
        GregorianCalendar cal = new GregorianCalendar();
        cal.setTime(d2);
        Date d1 = truncateTime( cal );
        System.out.println(d1.toString());
        System.out.println(d2.toString());
}

Defining ‘Midnight’

The word “midnight” is tricky to define.

Some think of it as the moment before a new day starts. Trying to represent that in software as tricky as the last moment of the day can always be subdivided as a smaller fraction of a second.

I suggest a better way of thinking about this is to get “first moment of the day”.

This supports the commonly used approach of defining a span of time as ‘Half-Open’, where the beginning is inclusive while the ending is exclusive. So a full day starts with the first moment of the day and runs up to, but not including, the first moment of the following day. A full day would like this (notice the date going from the 3rd to the 4th):

>2016-02-03T00:00:00.0-08:00[America/Los_Angeles]/2016-02-04T00:00:00.0-08:00[America/Los_Angeles]

Joda-Time

If using the Joda-Time library, call withTimeAtStartOfDay.

Note how we specify the time zone. If omitted, the JVM’s current default time zone is implicitly applied. Better to be explicit.

DateTime todayStart = DateTime.now( DateTimeZone.forID( "America/Montreal" ) ).withTimeAtStartOfDay() ;

If using Java 8 or later, better to use the java.time package built into Java. See sibling Answer by Jens Hoffman.

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss");    
Date date = new Date(); System.out.println(dateFormat.format(date));    //2014/08/06 15:59:4