comparing two different dates in java

[Yotam Ohayon]

hi
i have two date, one of type long (retrieved from file.lastModified()) and the other date is a String object.
i was trying to figure out exactly how to parse them to the same form and compre them. i need to know which is after the other.
i was looking at SimpleDateFormat, DateFormat and Date and yet i still didn't manage to do it.
any suggestions?

thanks,
Yotam

[Mohamed Sanaulla]

Did you try the java.util.Calendar class?

[Yotam Ohayon]

i took a brief look at the API and it seems like it would do the job, only i now know we are instructed to use SimpleDateFormat

[Jesper de Jong]

DateFormat and SimpleDateFormat are for formatting java.util.Date objects into strings, or parsing strings back to Date objects. Those classes don't contain methods to compare dates.

[Yotam Ohayon]

when you use a file.lastModified() method it returns a long value counting the time from 1970 or someting like that. is there any method you know
that can parse this long value into a date? i was looking for one but couldn't find it

[David Byron]

Yotam Ohayon wrote:when you use a file.lastModified() method it returns a long value counting the time from 1970 or someting like that. is there any method you know
that can parse this long value into a date? i was looking for one but couldn't find it

How 'bout

long millis = file.lastModified();
Date touchedOn = new Date(millis);

[ashirvad jain]

Hi Yatom,

As david suggested,

# long millis = file.lastModified();
# Date touchedOn = new Date(millis);

Further more , you can use DateFormat, like below,

DateFormat format=DateFormat.getDateInstance(STYLE); // STYLE="HH:MM:SS " based on your requirement.
String fileDate=format.format(touchedOn );
fileDate.equals(DateToCompareWith);

I hope this will help you.