Calculating Java dates

To keep track of time, Java counts the number of milliseconds from the start of January 1, 1970. This means, for example, that January 2, 1970, began 86,400,000 milliseconds later. Similarly, December 31, 1969, began 86,400,000 milliseconds before January 1, 1970. The Java Date class keeps track of those milliseconds as a long value. Because long is a signed number, dates can be expressed before and after the start of January 1, 1970. The largest positive and negative values expressible by the long primitive can generate dates forward and backward about 290,000,000 years, which suits most people's schedules.

The Date class
The Date class, found in the java.util package, encapsulates a long value representing a specific moment in time. One useful constructor is Date(), which creates a Date object representing the time the object was created. The getTime() method returns the long value of a Date object. In the program below, I use the Date() constructor to create a date based on when the program was run, and the getTime() method to find out the number of milliseconds that the date represents:



import java.util.*;


public class Now {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Date now = new Date();
long nowLong = now.getTime();
System.out.println("Value is " + nowLong);
}
}


When I ran that program, it gave me a value of 972,568,255,150. A quick check with my calculator confirms this number is at least in the correct ballpark: it's a bit less than 31 years, which corresponds to the right number of years between January 1, 1970, and the day I wrote this article. While computers may thrive on numbers like the foregoing value, most people are reluctant to say such things as "I'll see you on 996,321,998,346." Fortunately, Java provides a way to convert Date objects to Strings, which represent dates in more traditional ways. The DateFormat class, discussed in the next section, can create Strings with alacrity.

The DateFormat class
One purpose of the DateFormat class is to create Strings in ways that humans can easily deal with them. However, because of language differences, not all people want to see a date in exactly the same way. Someone in France may prefer to see "25 decembre 2000," while someone in the United States may be more accustomed to seeing "December 25, 2000." So when an instance of a DateFormat class is created, the object contains information concerning the particular format in which the date is to be displayed. To use the default format of the user's computer, you can apply the getDateInstance method in the following way to create the appropriate DateFormat object:


DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateInstance();


The DateFormat class is found in the java.text package.

Converting to a String
You can convert a Date object to a string with the format method. This is shown in the following demonstration program:



import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;

public class NowString {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Date now = new Date();
DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateInstance();
String s = df.format(now);
System.out.println("Today is " + s);
}
}


The getDateInstance method shown in the code above, with no arguments, creates an object in the default format or style. Java also provides some alternative styles for dates, which you can obtain through the overloaded getDateInstance(int style). For convenience' sake, DateFormat provides some ready-made constants that you can use as arguments in the getDateInstance method. Some examples are SHORT, MEDIUM, LONG, and FULL, which are demonstrated in the program below:



import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;

public class StyleDemo {
public static void main(String[] args) {
Date now = new Date();

DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateInstance();
DateFormat df1 = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT);
DateFormat df2 = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.MEDIUM);
DateFormat df3 = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.LONG);
DateFormat df4 = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.FULL);
String s = df.format(now);
String s1 = df1.format(now);
String s2 = df2.format(now);
String s3 = df3.format(now);
String s4 = df4.format(now);

System.out.println("(Default) Today is " + s);
System.out.println("(SHORT) Today is " + s1);
System.out.println("(MEDIUM) Today is " + s2);
System.out.println("(LONG) Today is " + s3);
System.out.println("(FULL) Today is " + s4);
}
}


That program output the following:



(Default) Today is Nov 8, 2000
(SHORT) Today is 11/8/00
(MEDIUM) Today is Nov 8, 2000
(LONG) Today is November 8, 2000
(FULL) Today is Wednesday, November 8, 2000


The same program, after being run on my computer with the default regional settings changed to Swedish, displayed this output:



(Default) Today is 2000-nov-08
(SHORT) Today is 2000-11-08
(MEDIUM) Today is 2000-nov-08
(LONG) Today is den 8 november 2000
(FULL) Today is den 8 november 2000


From that, you can see that in Swedish the months of the year are not capitalized (although November is still november). Also, note that the LONG and FULL versions are identical in Swedish, while they differ in American English. Additionally, it is interesting that the Swedish word for Wednesday, onsdag, is not included in the FULL version, where the English FULL version includes the name of the day.

Note that you can use the getDateInstance method to change the language for a DateFormat instance; however, in the case above, it was done on a Windows 98 machine by changing the regional settings from the control panel. The lesson here is that the default regional setting varies from place to place, which has both advantages and disadvantages of which the Java programmer should be aware. One advantage is that the Java programmer can write a single line of code to display a date, yet have the date appear in tens or even hundreds of different forms when the program is run on computers throughout the world. But that can be a disadvantage if the programmer wants just one format -- which is preferable, for example, in a program that outputs text and dates mixed together. If the text is in English, it would be inconsistent to have dates in other formats, such as German or Spanish. If the programmer relies on the default regional format, the date format will vary according to the executing computer's regional settings.

Parsing a String
You can also use the DateFormat class to create Date objects from a String, via the parse() method. This particular method can throw a ParseException error, so you must use proper error-handling techniques. A sample program that turns a String into a Date is shown below:



import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;

public class ParseExample {
public static void main(String[] args) {
String ds = "November 1, 2000";
DateFormat df = DateFormat.getDateInstance();
try {
Date d = df.parse(ds);
}
catch(ParseException e) {
System.out.println("Unable to parse " + ds);
}
}
}


The parse() method is a useful tool for creating arbitrary dates. I will examine another way of creating arbitrary dates. Also, you will see how to do elementary calculations with dates, such as calculating the date 90 days after another date. You can accomplish both tasks with the GregorianCalendar class.