Date and Time Formatting: Getting the current date in Android

Getting the date and time in Android is essential in many cases, especially if you want to log an action. To get the current date and time in android, you need to use the Calendar function. You need to get an instance of the Calendar function and then you can access the time and date.

Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
Date date = c.getTime();
date.toString();

The getTime() function returns an instance of Date which is of the following format:

Fri Sep 16 18:30:36 IST 2016

Date and time formats are specified by date and time pattern strings. This date and time can be designated by:

EEE MMM dd HH:mm:ss z yyyy

The table below shows what the pattern letters, date/time component and their designation with how they are presented:

Formatting the Date

The above function returns the date in a preset pattern. To get the date in a custom pattern you can use:

DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("EEE, d MMM yyyy, HH:mm");
String date = df.format(Calendar.getInstance().getTime());

This outputs something like:

Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08

You can have DateFormat patterns like these:

"yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' HH:mm:ss z" ---- 2001.07.04 AD at 12:08:56 IST
"hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz" ----------- 12 o'clock PM, Indian Standard Time
"EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z"------- Wed, 4 Jul 2001 12:08:56 +0530
"yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ"------- 2001-07-04T12:08:56.235+0530
"yyMMddHHmmssZ"-------------------- 010704120856+0530
"K:mm a, z" ----------------------- 0:08 PM, IST
"h:mm a" -------------------------- 12:08 PM
"EEE, MMM d, ''yy" ---------------- Wed, Jul 4, '01

Alternative Method:

To get the current date in Android, we can also use DateFormat along with getDateInstance() function.

Date date = new Date();
DateFormat.getDateInstance().format(date);

This outputs the date as:

Sep 16, 2016

You can also use the following functions:

DateFormat.getDateTimeInstance() ----- Sep 16, 2016 6:00:00 PM
DateFormat.getTimeInstance() --------- 6:00:00 PM