How to compare two different date periods in Java?

Question

I want to compare two different date periods and to do this regardless of wether the two date periods are the same? How can I do this?

  Date d1 = new Date();
  Date d2 = new Date();
  Date d3 = new Date();
  Date d4 = new Date();

Assuming all the above dates have different values I want to compare the date period between d1, d2 , d3 and d4. Even if they represent the same dates. Is this possible?

`Date` stores the time with millisecond precision. Are you sure you want to see if they're exactly the same? — kba, Apr 23 '12 at 12:54
I'm not sure I understood everything, but one trick: for any operation on dates in JAVA, use better `java.util.Calendar`. — sp00m, Apr 23 '12 at 12:55
possible duplicate of [Compare two dates in Java](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3144387/compare-two-dates-in-java) — Macarse, Apr 23 '12 at 17:16

score 2 · Answer 1 · answered Apr 23 '12 at 12:54

You can use compareTo method, as follows,

import java.util.*; 

 public class Main {   
     public static void main(String args[]) 
     {        
           Date today=new Date();                    
           Date myDate=new Date(today.getYear(),today.getMonth()-1,today.getDay());
           System.out.println("My Date is"+myDate);    
           System.out.println("Today Date is"+today);
           if(today.compareTo(myDate)<0)
               System.out.println("Today Date is Lesser than my Date");
           else if(today.compareTo(myDate)>0)
               System.out.println("Today Date is Greater than my date"); 
           else
               System.out.println("Both Dates are equal");      
      }
   }

+1 for thinking from the OOP perspective rather than an arithmatic one. — TechSpellBound, Apr 23 '12 at 17:07

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 23 '12 at 12:56

The way I've understood your question, d1-d2 is one date range, and d3-d4 is another, and you wish to see if these partially overlap. Is this correct?

In that case, you could check something like this:

if(
       (d1.before(d3) && d2.after(d3))
    || (d3.before(d2) && d4.after(d2))) {

}

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 23 '12 at 12:55

0

d1.getTime() will return the date as a long, so:

 long dif1 = d2.getTime() - d1.getTime();
 long dif2 = d4.getTime() - d3.getTIme();

 if (dif1 == dif2)
    thePeriodsAreEqual();

answered Apr 23 '12 at 12:55

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user3008708 · Answer 4 · 2014-07-10T04:51:01.870

compare date in period ... for modification of whealther service `

private boolean chDate(boolean brmv) {

   Date bdt = new Date(System.currentTimeMillis());
        bdt.setHours(0);``


   long time = bdt.getTime();


    long[] ttest=new long[5];
        ttest[0]=time+1000*60*60*0;
        ttest[1]=time+1000*60*60*8;
        ttest[2]=time+1000*60*60*13; 
        ttest[3]=time+1000*60*60*19;
        ttest[4]=time+1000*60*60*24;





        long dtmp = //heure à cherché;
        long la=System.currentTimeMillis();
    for(int i=0;i<4;i++)
        if(ttest[i]<la&&la<ttest[i+1])
            if((ttest[i]>dtmp||dtmp>ttest[i+1]))
                    brmv=true;


    return brmv;
}

How to compare two different date periods in Java?

4 Answers4