Compare two Dates in Java | Java SimpleDateFormat - Java Date Format

 

Java SimpleDateFormat - Java Date Format

dd-MMM-yy(14-NOV-22)

Introduction

Java SimpleDateFormat and DateFormat classes are used for date formatting. It is mostly used where we need to display or utilize the date and time functionality of Java. Both of these classes are present in com.text package.

Java DateFormat

• DateFormat is used for formatting a date into String based on specific locale that is provided as input.
• The locale is used for specifying the region and language for making the code more locale to the user.
• The way of writing date is different in different regions of the world. For example, 31st Dec 2017 will be written in India as 31-12-2017 but the same thing will be written in the United States of America as 12-31-2017.

Patterns

Let us have a look at the pattern syntax that should be used for the formatting pattern.

Letter for Pattern	Date or Time component	Examples
G	Era designator	AD
y	Year	2018 (yyyy), 18 (yy)
M	Month in year	July (MMMM), Jul (MMM), 07 (MM)
w	Results in week in year	16
W	Results in week in month	3
D	Gives the day count in the year	266
d	Day of the month	09 (dd), 9(d)
F	Day of the week in month	4
E	Day name in the week	Tuesday, Tue
u	Day number of week where 1 represents Monday, 2 represents Tuesday and so on	2
a	AM or PM marker	AM
H	Hour in the day (0-23)	12
k	Hour in the day (1-24)	23
K	Hour in am/pm for 12 hour format (0-11)	0
h	Hour in am/pm for 12 hour format (1-12)	12
m	Minute in the hour	59
s	Second in the minute	35
S	Millisecond in the minute	978
z	Timezone	Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z	Timezone offset in hours (RFC pattern)	-0800
X	Timezone offset in ISO format	-08; -0800; -08:00

Some letters should be used in different amount for different results like for month:

Type	Pattern	Example Output
Full Month	MMMM	July
Abbreviated Month	MMM	Jul
Numeric Month	MM	07

Examples

Let us now look at some examples for different formats of date and time.

Pattern	Result
MM/dd/yyyy	01/02/2018
dd-M-yyyy hh:mm:ss	02-1-2018 06:07:59
dd MMMM yyyy	02 January 2018
dd MMMM yyyy zzzz	02 January 2018 India Standard Time
E, dd MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss z	Tue, 02 Jan 2018 18:07:59 IST

import java.text.*;

import java.util.Date;

public class CompareTwoDatesTest {

   public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException {

      SimpleDateFormat sdformat = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yy");

      Date d1 = sdformat.parse("14-NOV-22");

      Date d2 = sdformat.parse("12-NOV-22");

      System.out.println("The date 1 is: " + sdformat.format(d1));

      System.out.println("The date 2 is: " + sdformat.format(d2));

      if(d1.compareTo(d2) > 0) {

         System.out.println("Date 1 occurs after Date 2");

      } else if(d1.compareTo(d2) < 0) {

         System.out.println("Date 1 occurs before Date 2");

      } else if(d1.compareTo(d2) == 0) {

         System.out.println("Both dates are equal");

      }

   }

}