getting the difference between date in days in java

Question

I'm trying something like this, where I'm trying to get the date from comboboxes

Calendar start = Calendar.getInstance();
Calendar end = Calendar.getInstance();  

int Sdate=Integer.parseInt(cmbSdate.getSelectedItem().toString());  
int Smonth=cmbSmonth.getSelectedIndex();
int Syear=Integer.parseInt(cmbSyear.getSelectedItem().toString());  

int Edate=Integer.parseInt(cmbEdate.getSelectedItem().toString());
int Emonth=cmbEmonth.getSelectedIndex();
int Eyear=Integer.parseInt(cmbEyear.getSelectedItem().toString());

start.set(Syear,Smonth,Sdate);  
end.set(Eyear,Emonth,Edate);

DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
String startdate=dateFormat.format(start.getTime());  
String enddate=dateFormat.format(end.getTime());

I'm not able to subtract the end and start date How do I get the difference between the start date and end date??

Answer 1

Like this.

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;

/**
 * DateDiff -- compute the difference between two dates.
 */
public class DateDiff {
  public static void main(String[] av) {
    /** The date at the end of the last century */
    Date d1 = new GregorianCalendar(2000, 11, 31, 23, 59).getTime();

    /** Today's date */
    Date today = new Date();

    // Get msec from each, and subtract.
    long diff = today.getTime() - d1.getTime();

    System.out.println("The 21st century (up to " + today + ") is "
        + (diff / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24)) + " days old.");
  }

}

Here is an article on Java date arithmetic.

Answer 2

Use JodaTime for this. It is much better than the standard Java DateTime Apis. Here is the code in JodaTime for calculating difference in days:

private static void dateDiff() {

    System.out.println("Calculate difference between two dates");
    System.out.println("=================================================================");

    DateTime startDate = new DateTime(2000, 1, 19, 0, 0, 0, 0);
    DateTime endDate = new DateTime();

    Days d = Days.daysBetween(startDate, endDate);
    int days = d.getDays();

    System.out.println("  Difference between " + endDate);
    System.out.println("  and " + startDate + " is " + days + " days.");

  }

Answer 3

Calendar start = Calendar.getInstance();
Calendar end = Calendar.getInstance();
start.set(2010, 7, 23);
end.set(2010, 8, 26);
Date startDate = start.getTime();
Date endDate = end.getTime();
long startTime = startDate.getTime();
long endTime = endDate.getTime();
long diffTime = endTime - startTime;
long diffDays = diffTime / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24);
DateFormat dateFormat = DateFormat.getDateInstance();
System.out.println("The difference between "+
  dateFormat.format(startDate)+" and "+
  dateFormat.format(endDate)+" is "+
  diffDays+" days.");