How to find the date of an object in Java.

Question

Suppose I have a class names "Test" and I create an instance of that class, Can I know the creation date of that instance?

Answer 1

You'll have to take care of that yourself, by having a Date instance member in your Test class and initializing it in your constructor (or in its declaration) with the current Date.

public class Test {

    Date date = new Date ();

    public Date getCreationDate ()
    {
        return date;
    }
}

Answer 2

No, objects do not have implicit timestamps. If you need to know, then add an instance variable to your class.

public class Test {
    private final Date creationDate = new Date();

    public Date getCreationDate() {
        return creationDate; // or a copy of creation date, to be safe
    }
}