How to get file last modified date in Java

By mkyong | Updated: December 2, 2020

Viewed: 25,196 (+173 pv/w)

Tags: file metadata java.io java.nio last modified

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