touch file using apache commons io example

This is an example of how to touch a file. We will make use of the org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils class, that provides file manipulation utilities. Touching a file implies that you should:

• Create a new File by converting the pathname string of the file into an abstract pathname.
• Use lastModified() API method of File that returns the time that the file denoted by this abstract pathname was last modified.
• Use touch(File file) method of org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils, that implements the same behaviour as the “touch” utility on Unix, changing the date and time stamps.

Let’s take a look at the code snippet that follows:

package com.javacodegeeks.snippets.core;
 
import java.io.IOException;
import org.apache.commons.io.FileUtils;
import java.io.File;
 
public class TouchFile {
 
  public static void main(String[] args) {
 
    try {  

  // we take a reference to an actual file on disk

  File testFile = new File("test.txt");

  // we take a reference of the file last modification date/time

  long fileTimestamp = testFile.lastModified();

  // using the touch() operation we change the file date and time stamps

  FileUtils.touch(testFile);

  System.out.println("File date / time was updated : " + (testFile.lastModified() > fileTimestamp));

    } catch (IOException ex) {

  ex.printStackTrace();
    }
    
  }
}

Output:

File date / time was updated : true

 
This was an example of how to touch a file.