Android/Java - Date Difference in days

Question

I am getting the current date (in format 12/31/1999 i.e. mm/dd/yyyy) as using the below code:

Textview txtViewData;
txtViewDate.setText("Today is " +
        android.text.format.DateFormat.getDateFormat(this).format(new Date()));

and I am having another date in format as: 2010-08-25 (i.e. yyyy/mm/dd) ,

so I want to find the difference between date in number of days, how do I find difference in days?

(In other words, I want to find the difference between CURRENT DATE - yyyy/mm/dd formatted date)

Answer 1

There's a simple solution, that at least for me, is the only feasible solution.

The problem is that all the answers I see being tossed around - using Joda, or Calendar, or Date, or whatever - only take the amount of milliseconds into consideration. They end up counting the number of 24-hour cycles between two dates, rather than the actual number of days. So something from Jan 1st 11pm to Jan 2nd 1am will return 0 days.

To count the actual number of days between startDate and endDate, simply do:

// Find the sequential day from a date, essentially resetting time to start of the day
long startDay = startDate.getTime() / 1000 / 60 / 60 / 24;
long endDay = endDate.getTime() / 1000 / 60 / 60 / 24;

// Find the difference, duh
long daysBetween = endDay - startDay;

This will return "1" between Jan 2nd and Jan 1st. If you need to count the end day, just add 1 to daysBetween (I needed to do that in my code since I wanted to count the total number of days in the range).

This is somewhat similar to what Daniel has suggested but smaller code I suppose.

Answer 2

I found a very easy way to do this and it's what I'm using in my app.

Let's say you have the dates in Time objects (or whatever, we just need the milliseconds):

Time date1 = initializeDate1(); //get the date from somewhere
Time date2 = initializeDate2(); //get the date from somewhere

long millis1 = date1.toMillis(true);
long millis2 = date2.toMillis(true);

long difference = millis2 - millis1 ;

//now get the days from the difference and that's it
long days = TimeUnit.MILLISECONDS.toDays(difference);

//now you can do something like
if(days == 7)
{
    //do whatever when there's a week of difference
}

if(days >= 30)
{
    //do whatever when it's been a month or more
}

Answer 3

Most of the answers were good and right for your problem of

so i want to find the difference between date in number of days, how do i find difference in days?

I suggest this very simple and straightforward approach that is guaranteed to give you the correct difference in any time zone:

int difference= 
((int)((startDate.getTime()/(24*60*60*1000))
-(int)(endDate.getTime()/(24*60*60*1000))));

And that's it!

Answer 4

This is Simple and best calculation for me and may be for you.

       try {
            /// String CurrDate=  "10/6/2013";
            /// String PrvvDate=  "10/7/2013";
            Date date1 = null;
            Date date2 = null;
            SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("M/dd/yyyy");
            date1 = df.parse(CurrDate);
            date2 = df.parse(PrvvDate);
            long diff = Math.abs(date1.getTime() - date2.getTime());
            long diffDays = diff / (24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);


            System.out.println(diffDays);

        } catch (Exception e1) {
            System.out.println("exception " + e1);
        }

Answer 5

best and easiest way to do this

  public int getDays(String begin) throws ParseException {
     long MILLIS_PER_DAY = 24 * 60 * 60 * 1000;
     SimpleDateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH);

    long begin = dateFormat.parse(begin).getTime();
    long end = new Date().getTime(); // 2nd date want to compare
    long diff = (end - begin) / (MILLIS_PER_DAY);
    return (int) diff;
}

Answer 6

Not really a reliable method, better of using JodaTime

  Calendar thatDay = Calendar.getInstance();
  thatDay.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,25);
  thatDay.set(Calendar.MONTH,7); // 0-11 so 1 less
  thatDay.set(Calendar.YEAR, 1985);

  Calendar today = Calendar.getInstance();

  long diff = today.getTimeInMillis() - thatDay.getTimeInMillis(); //result in millis

Here's an approximation...

long days = diff / (24 * 60 * 60 * 1000);

To Parse the date from a string, you could use

  String strThatDay = "1985/08/25";
  SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd");
  Date d = null;
  try {
   d = formatter.parse(strThatDay);//catch exception
  } catch (ParseException e) {
   // TODO Auto-generated catch block
   e.printStackTrace();
  } 


  Calendar thatDay = Calendar.getInstance();
  thatDay.setTime(d); //rest is the same....

Although, since you're sure of the date format... You Could also do Integer.parseInt() on it's Substrings to obtain their numeric values.