How to get last-accessed date and time of file in Go? - go

Question

Does anyone know how to check for a file access date and time? The function returns the modified date and time and I need something that compares the accessed date time to the current date and time.

Answer 1

You can use os.Stat to get a FileInfo struct which also contains the last access time (as well as the last modified and the last status change time).
info, err := os.Stat("example.txt")
if err != nil {
// TODO: handle errors (e.g. file not found)
}
// info.Atime_ns now contains the last access time
// (in nanoseconds since the unix epoch)
After that, you can use time.Nanoseconds to get the current time (also in nanoseconds since the unix epoch, January 1, 1970 00:00:00 UTC). To get the duration in nanoseconds, just subtract those two values:
duration := time.Nanoseconds() - info.Atime_ns

Answer 2

By casting os.FileInfo to *syscall.Stat_t:
package main
import ( "fmt"; "log"; "os"; "syscall"; "time" )
func main() {
for _, arg := range os.Args[1:] {
fileinfo, err := os.Stat(arg)
if err != nil {
log.Fatal(err)
}
atime := fileinfo.Sys().(*syscall.Stat_t).Atim
fmt.Println(time.Unix(atime.Sec, atime.Nsec))
}
}

Answer 3

Alternatively, after the Stat you can also do
statinfo.ModTime()
Also you can use Format() on it, should you need it eg for a webserver
see https://gist.github.com/alexisrobert/982674

Answer 4

For windows
syscall.Win32FileAttributeData
info, _ := os.Stat("test.txt")
fileTime := info.Sys().(*syscall.Win32FileAttributeData).LastAccessTime
aTime := time.Unix(0, fileTime.Nanoseconds())
Example
package main
import (
"fmt"
"log"
"os"
"syscall"
"time"
)
func main() {
info, _ := os.Stat("./test.txt")
fileTime := info.Sys().(*syscall.Win32FileAttributeData).LastAccessTime
// _ = info.Sys().(*syscall.Win32FileAttributeData).CreationTime
// _ = info.Sys().(*syscall.Win32FileAttributeData).LastWriteTime
fileAccessTime := time.Unix(0, fileTime.Nanoseconds())
// Compare
// t2, _ := time.Parse("2006/01/02 15:04:05 -07:00:00", "2023/02/08 13:18:00 +08:00:00")
now := time.Now()
log.Println(fileAccessTime)
log.Println(now.Add(-20 * time.Minute))
if fileAccessTime.After(now.Add(-20 * time.Minute)) {
fmt.Println("You accessed this file 20 minutes ago.")
}
}
Linux
see this answer