Retrieving File Creation Dates in Windows Using Go

When dealing with files, it's often necessary to retrieve information such as their creation date. While popular Go packages like os.Stat and os.Chtimes provide insights into other file attributes, obtaining the creation date seems challenging. This article will demonstrate a specific solution for accessing the creation date of files in Windows environments.

Unlike other attributes, the creation date is not readily accessible using the aforementioned methods. Instead, we must delve into the FileInfo.Sys method, which provides system-specific data structures. For Windows, this corresponds to the syscall.Win32FileAttributeData type.

The Win32FileAttributeData type encompasses several file attributes, including the CreationTime field. This field contains a Filetime type, which represents a 64-bit integer representing the number of nanoseconds since January 1, 1601.

To retrieve the creation time in Unix Timestamp format, we can use the following code:

d := fi.Sys().(*syscall.Win32FileAttributeData)
cTime = time.Unix(0, d.CreationTime.Nanoseconds())

This approach allows us to efficiently obtain the creation date of files in a Windows environment. However, it's crucial to note that this solution is Windows-specific and should be wrapped in build constraints. This can be achieved either by placing the code in a _windows.go file or protecting it using the //go:build windows directive.