Strange Data Types For Date-Time
Using:
- An int to represent the digits of a calendar date
- A string to represent time-of-day digits
- A double to represent a duration of fractional hours
…are all unusual approaches. Probably not the wisest choices in handling date-time values.
Avoid java.util.Date/Calendar
Know that the bundled classes java.util.Date and .Calendar are notoriously troublesome and should be avoided. Use either Joda-Time or the new java.time.* package (Tutorial) in Java 8. And get familiar with the handy ISO 8601 standard.
Time Zone
Your question and example ignore the crucial issue of time zone. Handling date-time data without time zone is like handling text files without knowing their character encoding. Not good.
Use proper time zone names to create time zone object. Avoid the non-standard 3-letter codes.
Joda-Time
In Joda-Time, a DateTime object is similar to a java.util.Date object but actually knows its own assigned time zone.
Joda-Time offers three classes for representing spans of time: Period, Duration, and Interval.
The Interval class uses the "Half-Open" approach, where the beginning is inclusive and the ending is exclusive. This approach works well for handling spans of time and comparisons. Look for the handy contains
, abuts
, overlap
, and gap
methods.
int dateInput = 20140214;
String start_timeInput = "14:30";
double durationInput = 50.30;
// Clean up these inputs.
String datePortion = Integer.toString( dateInput );
String input = datePortion + " " + start_timeInput;
DateTimeFormatter formatterInput = DateTimeFormat.forPattern( "yyyyMMdd HH:mm");
// Specify the time zone this date-time represents.
DateTimeZone timeZone = DateTimeZone.forID( "Europe/Paris" ); // Or, DateTimeZone.UTC
DateTime dateTime = formatterInput.withZone( timeZone ).parseDateTime( input );
// Convert fractional hours to milliseconds, then milliseconds to a Duration object.
long millis = ( 60L * 60L * (long)(1000L * durationInput) ); // 1 hour = 60 minutes * 60 seconds * 1000 milliseconds.
Duration duration = new Duration( millis );
Interval interval = new Interval( dateTime, duration );
DateTimeFormatter formatterOutput = DateTimeFormat.forStyle( "MM" ).withLocale( Locale.FRANCE );
String description = "De " + formatterOutput.print( interval.getStart() ) + " à " + formatterOutput.print( interval.getEnd() );
Dump to console…</p>
System.out.println( "input: " + input );
System.out.println( "dateTime: " + dateTime );
System.out.println( "duration: " + duration ); // Format: PnYnMnDTnHnMnS (from ISO 8601)
System.out.println( "interval: " + interval ); // Format: <start>/<end> (from ISO 8601)
System.out.println( "description: " + description );
When run…</p>
input: 20140214 14:30
dateTime: 2014-02-14T14:30:00.000+01:00
duration: PT181080S
interval: 2014-02-14T14:30:00.000+01:00/2014-02-16T16:48:00.000+01:00
description: De 14 févr. 2014 14:30:00 à 16 févr. 2014 16:48:00