File Created Date Time in ColdFusion / CFML

Today I needed to get the time that a file was created from within some CFML code. I had first thought that cfdirectory or directoryList would return this, but it only returns the date the a file was modified, not the date that it was created.

My next thought was that getFileInfo must return this, but again it only returns the date that the file was last modified. Even java.io.File only returns the last modified date, not the date the file was created.

The Solution

The solution is to use Java's NIO (Native IO) file API, and more specifically the java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes implementation.

Here's a function that will return the date that a file was created, modified, and the date that the file was last accessed.

function getFileAttributes(path) {
  var filePath = createObject("java", "java.nio.file.Paths").get(arguments.path, []);
  var basicAttribs = createObject("java", "java.nio.file.attribute.BasicFileAttributes");
  var fileAttribs = createObject("java", "java.nio.file.Files").readAttributes(filePath, basicAttribs.getClass(), []);
  return {
    "creationTime": fileAttribs.creationTime().toString(),
    "lastModifiedTime": fileAttribs.lastModifiedTime().toString(),
    "lastAccessTime": fileAttribs.lastAccessTime().toString()
  };
}

Note that some linux file system implementations don't actually keep track of the last access time (or atime as they call it), so you might get the last modified date there instead.