In this example we are going to see how you can change the “Last Modified” date of a File in your File System in Java. We are simply going to use the setLastModified method of the File class. We are also going to see how you can parse a string with a date format to a Date object which is kind of cool.
So the basic steps to change the “Last Modified” date of file in Java are:
- Use the
SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy")constructor to make a newSimpleDateFormatclass instance. - Construct a
Stringobject with the “MM/dd/yyyy” format. - Use
parse(String date)method of theSimpleDateFormatclass to create a newDateobject with the date value of theString. - Use
File.setLastModified(Date.getTime())method to set the new “Last Modified” date of the file.
Let’s see the code:
package com.javacodegeeks.java.core;
import java.io.File;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Date;
public class ChangeFileLastModifiedDate {
public static final String filepath = "/home/nikos/Desktop/testFile.txt";
public static void main(String[] args) {
try {
File file = new File(filepath);
SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy");
// print the original Last Modified date
System.out.println("Original Last Modified Date : "
+ dateFormat.format(file.lastModified()));
// set this date
String newLastModifiedString = "01/31/1821";
// we have to convert the above date to milliseconds...
Date newLastModifiedDate = dateFormat.parse(newLastModifiedString);
file.setLastModified(newLastModifiedDate.getTime());
// print the new Last Modified date
System.out.println("Lastest Last Modified Date : "
+ dateFormat.format(file.lastModified()));
} catch (ParseException e) {
e.printStackTrace();
}
}
}
Output:
Original Last Modified Date : 02/21/2013
New Last Modified Date : 02/02/2000
This was an example on how to change the Last Modified date value of a File in your File System in Java.
