Java Calendar Examples: Date and DateFormat

Use the Calendar class to manage dates. Parse and store dates with Date and DateFormat.

Calendar. A Calendar maps out time. With it, we divide time into days, into months and years. In Java, a Calendar is used to manage time values.

Dates, DateFormat. Other classes too are helpful. A Date instance is used to store a point in time. A DateFormat helps us convert time Strings.

A Calendar example. This example combines several time-oriented classes in Java. It uses the DateFormat class to parse a String into a Date. And it sets up a Calendar from that Date.

DateFormat: This class provides the parse method. With parse, we can convert a String into its Date representation.

Date: This represents a point in time. The DateFormat parse method returns a Date instance.

Calendar: With Calendar we access values from the Date. We can set a Calendar and get values, like hours, from it.

Java program that uses Calendar import java.text.DateFormat; import java.text.ParseException; import java.util.Calendar; import java.util.Date; public class Program { public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException { // Get DateFormat and parse a String into a Date. DateFormat format = DateFormat.getInstance(); Date date = format.parse("05/14/14 1:06 PM"); // Set date in a Calendar. Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(); cal.setTime(date); // Get hours from the Calendar. int hours = cal.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY); if (hours == 13) { System.out.println(true); } } } Output true

GetInstance. The DateFormat and Calendar classes are abstract ones. We cannot instantiate them with new. But with getInstance we can use their helpful methods.

Calendar, get. We access values from a Calendar with the get method. To get a certain field, we pass a constant int like Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY. This returns that value.

After, before. Two Calendars can be compared. After initializing them with set(), we call after and before to see which is earlier in time.

CompareTo: This returns negative one, 0 or one. The int indicates the relative order of the two Calendars.

Java program that uses after, before, compareTo import java.util.Calendar; public class Program { public static void main(String[] args) { // Set date to 5/13. Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(); cal.set(2014, 5, 13); // Set date to 5/14. Calendar cal2 = Calendar.getInstance(); cal2.set(2014, 5, 14); // See if first date is after, before second date. boolean isAfter = cal.after(cal2); boolean isBefore = cal.before(cal2); System.out.println(isAfter); System.out.println(isBefore); // Compare first to second date. int compare = cal.compareTo(cal2); System.out.println(compare); } } Output false true -1

Format. We can display Calendars with format strings and the String.format method. After a lowercase "t" we specify our time-formatting characters.Format

Often to manipulate, test and format dates in Java, many classes must be used together. This is at first challenging. But with practice, these classes are easier to use.

Custom methods. Writing custom methods to deal with dates is a burden. Built-in code, as we find in the Date, Calendar and DateFormat classes, is already tested and correct.

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Java Calendar Examples: Date and DateFormat

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