Question

What is the best way to generate a current datestamp in Java?

YYYY-MM-DD:hh-mm-ss

Answer 1

Using the standard JDK, you will want to use java.text.SimpleDateFormat

Date myDate = new Date(); SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat('yyyy-MM-dd:HH-mm-ss'); String myDateString = sdf.format(myDate); 

However, if you have the option to use the Apache Commons Lang package, you can use org.apache.commons.lang.time.FastDateFormat

Date myDate = new Date(); FastDateFormat fdf = FastDateFormat.getInstance('yyyy-MM-dd:HH-mm-ss'); String myDateString = fdf.format(myDate); 

FastDateFormat has the benefit of being thread safe, so you can use a single instance throughout your application. It is strictly for formatting dates and does not support parsing like SimpleDateFormat does in the following example:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat('yyyy-MM-dd:HH-mm-ss'); Date yourDate = sdf.parse('2008-09-18:22-03-15');