Comparing 2 dates

[Preeti Sikri]

Hi
I have a field called Last updated date and I alread have some date in that field Now what I want to do is compare last updated with current date and see if the last update date is from within last 5 month and then I want to print new. Please help me my pseduo code is something like this
If (last-updated-date lasser then last 5 months)
{
print("new");
}
else{
print("old");
}
Any help would be great.
Thanks

[paul wheaton]

It seems to me that the date stuff in java has been iffy in the past. A few years ago I mashed my C++ date stuff into Java and have been using that ever since. There might be some new stuff in the java libraries that will do what you want, but I'm not familiar with it.
If you like, I've made my libraries free. See www.javaranch.com/common.jsp and look for the JDate and GDate stuff. Just convert your dates to JDate and these have comparators. Or, you could extract the int values and compare them.

[Rob Ross]

The Calendar class works like a champ for what you need. Here's a little sample program:

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Calendar;
public class DateTest2
{
    
    /**
     *
     */
    static public void main(String[] args) 
    {
DateTest2 dt = new DateTest2();
    }
    
    public DateTest2()
    {

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(); //current date/time using default local and timezone

Date today = cal.getTime();

//create a date that's 2 months in the past
cal.add(Calendar.MONTH,-2);
Date twoMonthsAgo = cal.getTime();

cal.add(Calendar.MONTH,-4); //four months previous to last change, so now
// is SIX months ago
Date sixMonthsAgo = cal.getTime();

//is the first date within 5 months of today?
(cal = Calendar.getInstance()).add(Calendar.MONTH,-5);
Date fiveMonthsAgo = cal.getTime();

Date someUnkownDate = twoMonthsAgo;

//test if the unknown date is within the last 5 months
if(someUnkownDate.after(fiveMonthsAgo))
{
    System.out.println("new");
}
else
{
    System.out.println("old");   
}

//test our second date
someUnkownDate = sixMonthsAgo;

//test if the unknown date is within the last 5 months
if (someUnkownDate.after(fiveMonthsAgo))
{
    System.out.println("new");   
}
else
{
    System.out.println("old");   
}

    }
}//end  public DateTest2()

Hope this helps!
Rob
[ January 08, 2002: Message edited by: Rob Ross ]