Start of previous year

Question

**DATE FROM:** 
def format=new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd")
def cal=Calendar.getInstance()
cal.get(Calendar.YEAR);
cal.set(Calendar.MONTH, 0); 
cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 31);
[format.format(cal.getTime())]

**DATE TO:**
def format=new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd")
def cal=Calendar.getInstance()
cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,-cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH))
[format.format(cal.getTime())]

when year changes (2020 - 2021) - it confuses January of previous year with January of this year
I have to correct so that in January (December reporting) it extracts data for period 31.01 - 31.12. of previous year.

The job was wrong because it extracted data from 31.01.2021 to 31.12.2020

// retrieve details of the current date
def cal = Calendar.instance;
def currentYear = cal.get(Calendar.YEAR);
def currentMonth = cal.get(Calendar.MONTH);
 

// set the instance to the start of the previous month
if ( currentMonth == 0 ) {
cal.set(currentYear-1, 11, 1);
} else {
cal.set(currentYear, (currentMonth-1), 1);
}
 
// extract the date, and format to a string
Date previousMonthStart = cal.time;
String previousMonthStartFormatted = previousMonthStart.format('yyyy-MM-dd');

Answer 1

If all you are looking for is the start of the previous year as in your title then the following code:

import java.time.*

def startOfPreviousYear = LocalDate.now()
                                   .withDayOfMonth(1)
                                   .withMonth(1)
                                   .minusYears(1)

println startOfPreviousYear

def againStartingFromJanuary = LocalDate.of(2021, 1, 15)
                                        .withDayOfMonth(1)
                                        .withMonth(1)
                                        .minusYears(1)

println againStartingFromJanuary

demonstrates one way to accomplish this. When run, this prints (with now being today's date of 2021.Mar.10):

─➤ groovy solution.groovy
2020-01-01
2020-01-01

updated after comments

You can get the end of previous and current months with something like this:

import java.time.* 

def endOfPreviousMonth = LocalDate.now()
                                  .withDayOfMonth(1)
                                  .minusDays(1)

def endOfCurrentMonth  = LocalDate.now()
                                  .withDayOfMonth(1)
                                  .plusMonths(1)
                                  .minusDays(1)

println "end of last month:    ${endOfPreviousMonth}"
println "end of current month: ${endOfCurrentMonth}"

which with current date prints:

end of last month:    2021-02-28
end of current month: 2021-03-31

or if we are in january:

def endOfPreviousMonth = LocalDate.of(2021, 1, 15)
                                  .withDayOfMonth(1)
                                  .minusDays(1)

def endOfCurrentMonth  = LocalDate.of(2021, 1, 15)
                                  .withDayOfMonth(1)
                                  .plusMonths(1)
                                  .minusDays(1)

println "end of last month:    ${endOfPreviousMonth}"
println "end of current month: ${endOfCurrentMonth}"

which prints:

─➤ groovy solution.groovy
end of last month:    2020-12-31
end of current month: 2021-01-31

In general you should try to, when possible, stay away from using manual date arithmetic when dealing with dates if your target is based on the current date (as in, previous month, next month, three months ago, etc). Use the api:s handed to you by java. The date classes take care of rolling years, rolling months, rolling days, leap years, etc, all that stuff that you really do not want to spend time solving yourself.