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.

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

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.

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.

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

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

Download Source Code

References

• Managing File Metadata
• Wikipedia – Epoch time
• How to format FileTime in Java