How to get current month, previous month and two months ago

Question

I need a function that will return three strings:

first string will contain the current month and the current year.
second string will contain the previous month and current year.
third string will contain two months ago and current year.

This, of course, should also work if current month is January, for example.

So right now, the results should be:

September 2015
August 2015
July 2015

[SO](http://stackoverflow.com/help/on-topic): Questions asking for homework help must include a summary of the work you've done so far to solve the problem, and a description of the difficulty you are having solving it. — Naman Gala, Sep 29 '15 at 11:01
http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/util/Calendar.html — Daniel Rosano, Sep 29 '15 at 11:05
Why did you add the "webdriver" tag? How is this question related? — Puce, Sep 29 '15 at 11:20

Phylogenesis · Accepted Answer · 2015-09-29T12:21:59.040

17

A Java 8 version (using the java.time.YearMonth class) is here.

YearMonth thisMonth    = YearMonth.now();
YearMonth lastMonth    = thisMonth.minusMonths(1);
YearMonth twoMonthsAgo = thisMonth.minusMonths(2);

DateTimeFormatter monthYearFormatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MMMM yyyy");

System.out.printf("Today: %s\n", thisMonth.format(monthYearFormatter));
System.out.printf("Last Month: %s\n", lastMonth.format(monthYearFormatter));
System.out.printf("Two Months Ago: %s\n", twoMonthsAgo.format(monthYearFormatter));

This prints the following:

Today: September 2015

Last Month: August 2015

Two Months Ago: July 2015

edited Sep 29 '15 at 12:21

answered Sep 29 '15 at 12:16

Phylogenesis

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Consider to use YearMonth instead of LocalDate. – Puce Sep 29 '15 at 12:18
@Puce Thanks. I have updated the answer to use that class for clarity's sake. – Phylogenesis Sep 29 '15 at 12:22

Davide Lorenzo MARINO · Answer 2 · 2015-09-29T12:48:23.137

10

Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar();
c.setTime(new Date());
SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM YYYY");
System.out.println(sdf.format(c.getTime()));   // NOW
c.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1);
System.out.println(sdf.format(c.getTime()));   // One month ago
c.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1);
System.out.println(sdf.format(c.getTime()));   // Two month ago

edited Sep 29 '15 at 12:48

answered Sep 29 '15 at 11:03

Davide Lorenzo MARINO

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Plus one but one small thing you will need four M's to generate the complete months name: SimpleDateFormat("MMMM YYYY") – CloudyMarble Sep 29 '15 at 11:10
MMM will display Sep, Aug, Jul ... perhaps it will be better to use MMMM to display full month names – Daniel Rosano Sep 29 '15 at 11:11
@Daniel Yes correct, I corrected my answer. Thank you for the correction of the typo. – Davide Lorenzo MARINO Sep 29 '15 at 12:48

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Feb 04 '22 at 18:01

Below is an example using LocalDate written in Kotlin.

import java.time.LocalDate
import java.time.format.TextStyle
import java.util.Locale

val currentMonth = LocalDate.now().month.getDisplayName(TextStyle.FULL, Locale.getDefault()) //February
val prevMonth = LocalDate.now().minusMonths(1).getDisplayName(TextStyle.FULL, Locale.getDefault()) //January
val twoMonthsAgo = LocalDate.now().minusMonths(2) //DECEMBER

score -1 · Answer 4 · edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

-1

Get the Months you need (Current, Current -1 and Current -2) see here
Get the Textual form of the Months like shown here

edited May 23 '17 at 12:09

Community

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answered Sep 29 '15 at 11:05

CloudyMarble

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score -1 · Answer 5 · answered Sep 29 '15 at 11:33

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;

public static void main(String[] args) {


Date currentDate = null;
String dateString = null;
try {
    Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar();
    c.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0); // anything 0 - 23
    c.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
    c.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
    //c.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1);//previous month
    //c.add(Calendar.MONTH, -2);//two months back
    currentDate = c.getTime(); // the midnight, that's the first second
    // of the day.


    SimpleDateFormat sdfr = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM yyyy");
    dateString = sdfr.format(currentDate);
} catch (Exception e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}
System.out.println(dateString); //prints current date

}

after removing comment it will print -1 month date and -2 month date — Pankaj Saboo, Sep 29 '15 at 11:36

How to get current month, previous month and two months ago

5 Answers5