Getting the current time and comparing it to a time in the future

Question

Hello,
I am seeing in my research some debate on the best way to get the time. I am reading that just using the Date class and calling getTime() is not the most reliable way to do things. Overall, I am trying to get the current time down to the millisecond. I then want to add 5 seconds to that time and then store that value. FInally, when the current time is greater or equal to this stored value, I want to continue on in my program. Can anyone point me in the right direction on how to calculate the time variable? Any help would be much appreciated. I am new to the JAVA world.
Thanks,
Tim

Answer 1

To store the current time, simply use new java.util.Date(). Yes, there might be slight inconsistencies and it might not be the most accurate time possible, but without significant additional effort (perhaps a native O/S call or the use of another time library), you will not do much better. Calendar won't help in this instance either. The easiest way to get five seconds in the future is to do the following:
Date now = new Date();
Date future = new Date(now.getTime() + 5000);To store and retrieve the value, it depends on what you are doing. You can place it in the database via JDBC (BTW, if you trust the database timestamp more than Java's you can use something like Oracle's SYSDATE instead of Java's date in your SQL query). You can place it in the filesystem. You can store it in the user's session.
- Saish