Date Class in Java

Introduction

This article explains how the Java Date class works. This class is available in the "java.util.*" package, use it to print the current system time and date. This class is useful when we need to develop an application requiring use of the current date and time.

Class contents

This class contains basically two types of objects.

1. First we create the object of the Date class. We create the Date class object using the new operator.
   Date d=new Date();

2. The second type objects of the Date class is used to accept an argument.
   Date(long miliseconds) d=new Date();

When we create a Date class object we can call any of the following support methods to play with the dates.

Public methods

 The following are the public methods available in the Date class:

• String toString( )
  
  Changes the given Date object into a string and return the result.
   
• int hashCode( )
  
  Returns a hash code for the given object.
   
• void setTime(time)
  
  Rearrange the date and time specified by time, that represents an elapsed time in milliseconds from midnight, January 1, 1970.
   
• boolean after(Date date)
  
  Returns true if the object's date is after the specified date, else returns false.
   
• boolean before(Date date)
  
  Returns true if the object's date is before the specified date, else returns false.
   
• Object clone( )
  
  It creates a clone of the date object.
   
• int compareTo(Date d)
  
  Compares the value of two dates (in other words the object's date and the specified date); if the values are the same then 0 is returned, it returnsa negative value if the invoking object is earlier than the date and returns a positive value if the invoking object is later.
   
• int compareTo(Object o)
  
  Works automatically to compareTo(Date) if object(o) is of class Date. Otherwise, it throws a ClassCastException.
   
• boolean equals(Object d)
  
  After comparing values of both the two dates (in other words the object's date and the specified date) if they are the same it returns true, otherwise, it returns false.
   
• long getTime( )
  
  Shows the number of milliseconds used since January 1, 1970.

Date and time

By creating an object of the java.util.Date class.

DateEx.java

//import java.util.Date;

import java.util.*;

class DateEx

  {

    public static void main(String[] args)

      {

        // Initialize a Date object

        Date dt = new Date();       

        // display date and time using toString()

        System.out.println(dt.toString());

      }

  }  

Output

How to compare two dates in Java

The following are three ways to compare two dates:

• compareTo( ) method.
• after( ), equals( ), and before( ) method.
• getTime( ) method.

Formatting a date using SimpleDateFormat

It is a concrete class to format and parse dates. It allows us to start by choosing any user-defined pattern for date-time formatting.

For example:

DateEx2.java

import java.text.*;

import java.util.*;

public class DateEx2

  {

    public static void main(String args[])

      {

        Date d = new Date( );

        SimpleDateFormat frmt=new SimpleDateFormat ("E yyyy.MM.dd 'at' hh:mm:ss a zzz");

        System.out.println("Current Date: " + frmt.format(d));

      }

  }

Output

Formatting date using printf

A date can be formated very easily using the printf method. We use a two-letter format, starting with t and ending in one of the letters (like M, d, H, s, S,, etcetera).

For example:

DateEx3.java

//import java.util.Date;

import java.util.*;

class DateEx3

  {

    public static void main(String args[])

      {

        // Initiate a Date object

        Date d = new Date();

        // display date and time using toString()

        String s = String.format("Current Date and Time is : %tc", d );

        System.out.printf(s);

      }

  }

Output