How to get the file last modified date in Java

In an earlier article, we have learned how to change the file last modified date in Java. In this quick article, we will look at different ways to get the last modified date of a file using Java.

In Java 7 or higher, you can use Files.getLastModifiedTime() method to get the last modified date of a file as shown below:

try {
    Path path = Paths.get("input.txt");

    // print last modified date
    System.out.println("Last Modified Date: " + Files.getLastModifiedTime(path));

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

Here is the output of the above code:

Last Modified Date: 2019-12-01T18:20:11Z

In older Java versions (Java 6 or below), File.lastModified() can be used to get the file's last modified date as shown below:

File file = new File("input.txt");

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

// print last modified date
System.out.println("Last Modified Date: " + sdf.format(file.lastModified()));

Further Reading

You may be interested in other Java I/O articles:

• Reading and Writing Files in Java
• How to Read and Write Text Files in Java
• How to Read and Write Binary Files in Java
• Reading and Writing Files using Java NIO API
• How to read a file line by line in Java

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Last Updated: December 12, 2019