Read file creation time in Java

1. Introduction

In this article, we are going to show a way to determine file creation time in Java.

2. Read creation time using Files.getAttribute(...) method from JDK7

From JDK 7 we can determine file creation time using java.nio.Files class.

Let's check the first approach:

package com.frontbackend.java.io.attributes;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.attribute.FileTime;

public class CreationDateUsingFilesGetAttrs {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        File file = new File("/tmp/frontbackend.txt");

        FileTime creationTime = (FileTime) Files.getAttribute(file.toPath(), "creationTime");
        System.out.printf("The file creation date and time is: %s%n", creationTime);
    }
}

In this example, we make the use of Files.getAttribute(...) method that takes file Path and attribute name, which is in this case: creationTime. The result type depends on the given attribute, so in our example, we need to cast return Object to FileTime class that holds timestamp value.

Note that if the filesystem doesn't hold creation time of the files method Files.getAttribute(...) will return null.

3. Determine file creation time using Files.readAttributes(...) method

Reading all attributes using Files.readAttributes(...) method is another way to get file creation time:

package com.frontbackend.java.io.attributes;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.nio.file.Files;
import java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes;

public class CreationDateUsingFilesReadAttrs {

    public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
        File file = new File("/tmp/frontbackend.txt");

        BasicFileAttributes attributes = Files.readAttributes(file.toPath(), BasicFileAttributes.class);
        System.out.printf("The file creation date and time is: %s%n", attributes.creationTime());
    }
}

In this example we get BasicFileAttributes using Files.readAttributes(...) method, and then get the attribute we are looking for: attributes.creationTime().

This method is also an operating system dependent. When OS doesn't store file creation times it will return last modified time.

4. Read last modified time using File from java.io package

In JDK 6 we don't have dedicated API to determine file creation date straightforward. The best we can do here is to get the last modified time. Check the following example:

package com.frontbackend.java.io.attributes;

import java.io.File;
import java.util.Date;

public class ModifiedDateUsingFile {

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        File file = new File("/tmp/frontbackend.txt");

        Date lastModifiedTime = new Date(file.lastModified());
        System.out.println(lastModifiedTime);
    }
}

In this snippet, we create an instance of File class and use file.lastMofied() to get modified time as the timestamp.

5. Conclusion

In this article, we've learned how to get the file creation date in Java. We present two approaches from JDK 7 using java.nio.Files class and one example from JDK 6. Unfortunately below JDK 7 we don't have dedicated API to determine file creation date but we can still get last modified time using old java.io package.

As always, the code for examples is available over on GitHub.