How to initialize Google protocol buffers Timestamp in Java?

Question

Google protocol buffers (3.0.0-beta2) offers the well-known type Timestamp .

The documentation describes the initialization in Java using System.currentTimeMillis() as following:

long millis = System.currentTimeMillis();
Timestamp timestamp = Timestamp.newBuilder().setSeconds(millis / 1000)
    .setNanos((int) ((millis % 1000) * 1000000)).build();

Is there an alternative way in the recent Java 8 ?

Answer 1

Starting with Java 8 , there is the new Date/Time-API which makes this more appealing to the reader using java.time.Instant

Instant time = Instant.now();
Timestamp timestamp = Timestamp.newBuilder().setSeconds(time.getEpochSecond())
    .setNanos(time.getNano()).build();

The result should be the same concerning precision.

Answer 2

These days, you can use:

import static com.google.protobuf.util.Timestamps.fromMillis;
import static java.lang.System.currentTimeMillis;
import com.google.protobuf.Timestamp;

...

Timestamp timestamp = fromMillis(currentTimeMillis());

See documentation at:

• https://docs.oracle.com/javase/10/docs/api/java/lang/System.html#currentTimeMillis()
• https://developers.google.com/protocol-buffers/docs/reference/java/com/google/protobuf/util/Timestamps#fromMillis-long-