How do I get a Date without time in Java?

Question

Do you absolutely have to use java.util.Date? I would thoroughly recommend that you use Joda Time or the java.time package from Java 8 instead. In particular, while Date and Calendar always represent a particular instant in time, with no such concept as "just a date", Joda Time does have a type representing this (LocalDate). Your code will be much clearer if you're able to use types which represent what you're actually trying to do.

There are many, many other reasons to use Joda Time or java.time instead of the built-in java.util types - they're generally far better APIs. You can always convert to/from a java.util.Date at the boundaries of your own code if you need to, e.g. for database interaction.

Here is what I used to get today's date with time set to 00:00:00:

DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");

Date today = new Date();

Date todayWithZeroTime = formatter.parse(formatter.format(today));

You can use the DateUtils.truncate from Apache Commons library.

Example:

DateUtils.truncate(new Date(), java.util.Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH)

Is there any other way than these two?

Yes, there is.

LocalDate.now( 
    ZoneId.of( "Pacific/Auckland" ) 
)

java.time

Java 8 and later comes with the new java.time package built-in. See Tutorial. Much of the java.time functionality is back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport and further adapted to Android in ThreeTenABP.

Similar to Joda-Time, java.time offers a LocalDate class to represent a date-only value without time-of-day and without time zone.

Note that time zone is critical to determining a particular date. At the stroke of midnight in Paris, for example, the date is still “yesterday” in Montréal.

LocalDate today = LocalDate.now( ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" ) ) ;

By default, java.time uses the ISO 8601 standard in generating a string representation of a date or date-time value. (Another similarity with Joda-Time.) So simply call toString() to generate text like 2015-05-21.

String output = today.toString() ; 

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About java.time

The java.time framework is built into Java 8 and later. These classes supplant the troublesome old legacy date-time classes such as java.util.Date, Calendar, & SimpleDateFormat.

The Joda-Time project, now in maintenance mode, advises migration to the java.time classes.

To learn more, see the Oracle Tutorial. And search Stack Overflow for many examples and explanations. Specification is JSR 310.

Where to obtain the java.time classes?

• Java SE 8, Java SE 9, and later
  • Built-in.
  • Part of the standard Java API with a bundled implementation.
  • Java 9 adds some minor features and fixes.
• Java SE 6 and Java SE 7
  • Much of the java.time functionality is back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport.
• Android
  • Later versions of Android bundle implementations of the java.time classes.
  • For earlier Android, the ThreeTenABP project adapts ThreeTen-Backport (mentioned above). See How to use ThreeTenABP….

The ThreeTen-Extra project extends java.time with additional classes. This project is a proving ground for possible future additions to java.time. You may find some useful classes here such as Interval, YearWeek, YearQuarter, and more.

The most straightforward way:

long millisInDay = 60 * 60 * 24 * 1000;
long currentTime = new Date().getTime();
long dateOnly = (currentTime / millisInDay) * millisInDay;
Date clearDate = new Date(dateOnly);