How to get file last modified date in Java

In Java, we can use Files.readAttributes() to get the file metadata or attribute, and then lastModifiedTime() to display the last modified date of a file.


  Path file = Paths.get("/home/mkyong/file.txt");

  BasicFileAttributes attr = Files.readAttributes(file, BasicFileAttributes.class);

  System.out.println("lastModifiedTime: " + attr.lastModifiedTime());

1. BasicFileAttributes (NIO)

This example uses the java.nio.* to display the file attributes or metadata – creation time, last access time, and last modified time.

GetLastModifiedTime1.java


package com.mkyong.io.howto;

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

public class GetLastModifiedTime1 {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        String fileName = "/home/mkyong/file.txt";

        try {

            Path file = Paths.get(fileName);
            BasicFileAttributes attr =
                Files.readAttributes(file, BasicFileAttributes.class);

            System.out.println("creationTime: " + attr.creationTime());
            System.out.println("lastAccessTime: " + attr.lastAccessTime());
            System.out.println("lastModifiedTime: " + attr.lastModifiedTime());

        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }

    }

}

Output

Terminal


creationTime: 2020-07-20T09:29:54.627222Z
lastAccessTime: 2020-07-21T12:15:56.699971Z
lastModifiedTime: 2020-07-20T09:29:54.627222Z

The BasicFileAttributes also works for the directory, and we can use the same code to display the last modified time of a directory.

Further Reading
Read this example to convert the FileTime to another date-time format.

2. File.lastModified (Legacy IO)

For legacy IO, we can use the File.lastModified() to get the last modified time; the method returns a long value measured in milliseconds since the [epoch time](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epoch_(computing). We can use SimpleDateFormat to make it a more human-readable format.

GetLastModifiedTime2.java


package com.mkyong.io.howto;

import java.io.File;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;

public class GetLastModifiedTime2 {

    public static void main(String[] args) {

        String fileName = "/home/mkyong/test";

        File file = new File(fileName);

        System.out.println("Before Format : " + file.lastModified());

        SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss");

        System.out.println("After Format : " + sdf.format(file.lastModified()));

    }

}

Output

Terminal


Before Format : 1595237394627
After Format : 07/20/2020 17:29:54

Download Source Code

$ git clone https://github.com/mkyong/core-java

$ cd java-io

References

5 Comments

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Jo G

2 years ago

Thank you! 🙂

Arun

4 years ago

Hi MKyoung, I need to download the latest file from SFTP server but i don’t want to give the filename. It has to downloaded based on the last modified timestamp from server.
Thanks.

Cledilson

8 years ago

Muito bom, obrigado.

Rehan

11 years ago

Thanks, good!

SAMUSB

14 years ago

thanks its very usefull !!

1. BasicFileAttributes (NIO)

2. File.lastModified (Legacy IO)

Download Source Code

References

mkyong

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