Dates are not getting compared?

Question

I am comparing dates in my android application, how ever for my equal dates, compareTo or equals method returns me that dates are not equal. I have debugged through and I can see both my objects have same values. But some how it is not working. Following is the way I am doing it:

public static boolean compareDates(long deliveryTime, Date date) throws ParseException {

    Date deliveryDate = convertLongToDate(deliveryTime);
    deliveryDate.setHours(0);
    deliveryDate.setMinutes(0);
    deliveryDate.setSeconds(0);

    if (deliveryDate.equals(date))
    {
        return true;
    }

    return false;
}

My date object does not contain time, so I am setting deliverTime's time to 0(zero) as well, so that both objects can have same values. but it does not work. Any help is appreciated. Thanks!

`equals()` is not appropriate here, extract `Year` and `Day of Year` from both dates and compare both. — S.D., Mar 11 '13 at 13:30
By the way, Date is deprecated for long now and Calendar is the recommended replacement. — Egor, Mar 11 '13 at 13:31
Print out the `getTime()` value of your two dates. I'm guessing they are different. — GriffeyDog, Mar 11 '13 at 13:44

Justin Breitfeller · Answer 1 · 2013-03-11T13:50:15.673

0

Would it not be easier to just compare deliveryTime to date.getTime() instead of converting deliveryTime to a Date?

Edit

Since you didn't mention you want to ignore milliseconds, you could do:

(deliveryTime / 1000) == (date.getTime() / 1000)

That should strip out the milliseconds. Alternatively,

Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
c.setTime(deliveryTime);
c.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);
//Clear out the other fields you don't care to compare
Date deliveryDate = c.getTime()

edited Mar 11 '13 at 13:50

answered Mar 11 '13 at 13:26

Justin Breitfeller

13,737
4
39
47

I tried that, but I am getting difference in miliseconds, however when I see value in date objects, those are same. how is it possible? – Usama Sarwar Mar 11 '13 at 13:42
Its not possible. You must just have missed the milliseconds specified in the date. If you aren't concerned with milliseconds, you would need to strip those out as well. You would typically use the Calendar class for this. I'll update my answer with another approach. – Justin Breitfeller Mar 11 '13 at 13:46

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 11 '13 at 13:41

0

I would create a Date object out of the deliveryTime, and then compare the hours, minutes and seconds. A code is below.

public static boolean compareDates(long deliveryTime, Date date) {
  Date d = new Date(deliveryTime);
  return(d.getHours() == date.getHours() && d.getMinutes() == date.getMinutes() && d.getSeconds() == date.getSeconds());
}

answered Mar 11 '13 at 13:41

Michael von Wenckstern

36
3

it did the work for me. But I had to compare month, day and year in my case. However, you pointed me to right direction. Thanks.! – Usama Sarwar Mar 11 '13 at 13:51

score 0 · Answer 3 · edited Sep 13 '15 at 08:14

If you make date and deliverydate into date objects, then you can use

date.compareTo(deliveryDate);

This will return: 0 if the dates are the same, a value greater than 0 if date is more recent than deliveryDate, and a value less than 0 if date is before deliveryDate.

To get your dates into date format, you can use something like the following:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
        Date date = sdf.parse(date);
        Date deliveryDate = sdf.parse(deliveryTime);

Dates are not getting compared?

3 Answers3

Edit