Sure, I will write a detailed article about getting current milliseconds in Java.
Understanding Time and its measurement is crucial, particularly in the world of technology where precision matters. In Java, time can be measured in several ways. But, one of the most precise ways is by using milliseconds. Milliseconds are especially useful for tasks such as building timers, logs, latency checks and more. Milliseconds provide a higher precision timing mechanism, which can be valuable in numerous technological implementations.
Java allows us to fetch the current time in milliseconds through the System class. The System class consists of several useful class fields and methods that can’t be instantiated hence it’s often used for accessing system-related information and resources.
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Fetch Current Time in Milliseconds
In Java, the current time in milliseconds can be obtained by using the `System.currentTimeMillis()` method which belongs to ‘System’ class. It returns the current time in milliseconds from the Epoch time (1970-01-01 00:00:00.000 GMT).
long currentTimeInMilliseconds = System.currentTimeMillis();
System.out.println("Current time in milliseconds: " + currentTimeInMilliseconds);
Here, we are utilizing the `System.currentTimeMillis()` method that provides the current time in terms of milliseconds since midnight, January 1, 1970 UTC.
Step-by-Step Explanation
Let’s break down the aforementioned Java code:
1. `long currentTimeInMilliseconds = System.currentTimeMillis();` – This line of code is invoking the method `currentTimeMillis()` on the `System` class. The returns value is of ‘long’ type which is capable of holding large numbers as time in ms easily crosses the integer limits.
2. `System.out.println(“Current time in milliseconds: ” + currentTimeInMilliseconds);` – This is a simple command to print out the obtained time in milliseconds to the console.
System Class in Java
The `System` class is one of Java’s built-in classes, residing in the java.lang package. This class provides several methods and fields related to the system or environment in which the Java Virtual Machine runs. One such method is the `currentTimeMillis()` method.
Understanding currentTimeMillis()
The `currentTimeMillis()` method is a built-in method in Java which returns the current time in milliseconds. The time is represented as the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT (the epoch), which is the standard way of representing time in many systems. This method is thread-safe and can be used to measure elapsed time, which is useful as a simple benchmarking tool.
This is just a basic guide to understanding how to get the current milliseconds in Java. Further exploration into `System` class would help you discover more interesting applications.
