Working with Data & Time

• Java 8 introduced new APIs for Date and Time (java.time ) to

address the shortcomings of the older java.util.Date and
java.util.Calendar.
• Drawbacks of old date-time API
– Mutatable (accidentally changing date objects without realizing it)
– Confusing (months started from 0, seriously?)
– Not thread-safe
– A pain to format and parse
• Core classes of java.time package,
– LocalDate
– LocalTime
– LocalDateTime
– ZonedDateTime
– Period
– Duration and their supported APIs.
BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 1
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• LocalDate class (Just the Date)
– If we are building a birthday reminder app we don’t need
the time — just the date.
– The LocalDate represents a date in ISO format (yyyy-
MM-dd) without time.
– An instance of current date can be created from the
system clock:
• LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.now();
– We can get the LocalDate representing a specific day,
month and year by using the of method or the parse
method.
– For example, these code snippets represent the LocalDate
for August 14, 2025:
• LocalDate.of(2025, 08, 14);
• LocalDate.parse("2025-08-14");
BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 2
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• Accessing date components:
– getYear(): Returns the year.
– getMonth(): Returns the month as a Month enum.
– getMonthValue(): Returns the month as an int (1-12).
– getDayOfMonth(): Returns the day of the month.
– getDayOfWeek(): Returns the day of the week as a DayOfWeek
enum.
– getDayOfYear(): Returns the day of the year
• Modifying dates:
– plusYears(long years): Adds years to the LocalDate.
– minusYears(long years): Subtracts years from the LocalDate.
– plusMonths(long months): Adds months to the LocalDate.
– minusMonths(long months): Subtracts months from the LocalDate.
– plusDays(long days): Adds days to the LocalDate.
– minusDays(long days): Subtracts days from the LocalDate
BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 3
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• Comparing dates
– isBefore(ChronoLocalDate other): Checks if this date is before another
date.
– isAfter(ChronoLocalDate other): Checks if this date is after another date.
– isEqual(ChronoLocalDate other): Checks if this date is equal to another
date.
• Other useful methods
– isLeapYear(): Checks if the year is a leap year.
– lengthOfMonth(): Returns the number of days in the month represented
by the date.
– lengthOfYear(): Returns the number of days in the year represented by
the date.
– format(DateTimeFormatter formatter): Formats the LocalDate into a
string representation using a specified DateTimeFormatter.
– toEpochDay(): Converts the LocalDate to the number of days since the
epoch (January 1, 1970)

BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT

20-Aug-25 4
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 5
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 6
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• LocalTime class (Just the Time)
– The LocalTime class represents time without a date.
– when we care about the clock but not the calendar —
like setting a reminder for “5:30 PM every day”.
– An instance of the current time can be created using
the LocalTime.now() method.
• LocalTime now = LocalTime.now(); // 14:07:12.503202341
– By using of or parse method we can create an instance
of a LocalTime for a specific time.
• LocalTime eightFifteen = LocalTime.parse("08:15"); // 08:15
• LocalTime eightFifty = LocalTime.of(8, 50); // 08:50

BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT

20-Aug-25 7
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• We can retrieve time information using
methods like,
– getHour(), getMinute(), getSecond(),
and getNano().
• For manipulating LocalTime objects,
– plusHours(), minusHours(), and withHour()
• Comparison can be done using methods
– compareTo(), isAfter(), and isBefore().

BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT

20-Aug-25 8
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 9
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• LocalDateTime – Date and Time
– Sometimes we need both — like scheduling a meeting
or logging events.
– LocalDateTime is used to represent a combination of
date and time.
– An instance of LocalDateTime can be obtained from the
system clock similar to LocalDate and LocalTime:
• LocalDateTime.now();
– to create an instance using the factory “of” and “parse”
methods.
– The result would be a LocalDateTime instance
representing February 20, 2015, 6:30 a.m.:
• LocalDateTime.of(2015, Month.FEBRUARY, 20, 06, 30);
• LocalDateTime.parse("2015-02-20T06:30:00");

BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT

20-Aug-25 10
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 11
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• ZonedDateTime class:
– ZonedDateTime is provided by Java8 to handle time-zone-
specific dates and times.
– we can get a set of all zone ids:
Set<String> allZoneIds = ZoneId.getAvailableZoneIds();
• The zone Ids would be as Asia/Aden, America/Cuiaba, etc
– We can convert the LocalDateTime to a specific zone.
LocalDateTime now = LocalDateTime.now();
ZonedDateTime zonedDT = ZonedDateTime.of(now,
ZoneId.of("Africa/Nairobi"));
– The ZonedDateTime also provides the parse method to get
time-zone-specific date-time.
ZonedDateTime zonedDT = ZonedDateTime.parse("2025-08-
20T10:15:30+05:00[Asia/Karachi]");
BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 12
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 13
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• Period Class:
– The Period class is used to modify the values of a given date
and to get the difference between two given class.
– The Period class has various getter methods such
as getYears, getMonths and getDays to get values from
a Period object.
• Duration
– Similar to Period, the Duration class is used to deal with Time.
– We can get the Duration between two instants as either
a Duration or a specific unit.
• Period is for humans — "3 years, 2 months, and 1 day."
• Duration is for machines — "in milliseconds or hours."

BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT

20-Aug-25 14
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 15
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Working with Data & Time – Cont’d
• Formatting & Parsing – Make Dates Human-Friendly
– If we want to show the date as 14-Apr-2025 instead of the
default format, we can use DateTimeFormatter and using
this we can also turn a string into a date

BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT

20-Aug-25 16
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Utility framework
• In Java, a "utility framework" often refers to a collection of
classes and interfaces designed to provide common,
reusable functionalities that assist in various programming
tasks
• java.util package:
– This package is the cornerstone of Java's built-in utility classes.
– It encompasses
• Collections Framework
• Date and Time Facilities
• Event Model
• Random Number Generation
• String Parsing and Scanning

BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT

20-Aug-25 17
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 Random Number Generation
• We can create Random Number using random
class
• To use the Random Class to generate random
numbers, follow the steps below:
– Import the class java.util.Random
– Make the instance of the class Random,
i.e., Random rand = new Random()
– Invoke the nextInt(upperbound) method of rand
object to generate random numbers in the range 0
to upperbound-1.

BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT

20-Aug-25 18
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY
 BVL_DR.KALAM COMPUTING CENTRE, MIT
20-Aug-25 19
CAMPUS ANNA UNIVERSITY