Joda Time's Period.getMillis returns inaccurate number

Question

I ran into a strange issue with JodaTime's Period class. I come to the point where I've instantiated a Period object, which is being printed as: PT8M19.966S, which clearly says 8 minutes and 19 seconds (this is correct at this point), and I call Period.toMillis. The result I get is some random number, such as 968, or 152, numbers that clearly are not what this method is supposed to return. So I wonder if it is some kind of bug, or misuse from my side.

Show us a reproducable example – skaffman Mar 07 '12 at 14:58 — skaffman, Mar 07 '12 at 14:58
...this method doesn't exist? – Sam DeHaan Mar 07 '12 at 15:00 — Sam DeHaan, Mar 07 '12 at 15:00
sorry, I meant getMillis()... – Martin Asenov Mar 07 '12 at 15:36 — Martin Asenov, Mar 07 '12 at 15:36

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 07 '12 at 15:04

7

You mean getMillis()? The javadoc says it only returns the millisecond part of the period, not the period's duration in milliseconds.

answered Mar 07 '12 at 15:04

Sean Owen

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I see... I read the docs but obviously I missed the 'part' thing. Since I don't see toStandartMillis I guess I have to use toStandardSeconds().getSeconds() * 1000. I will give it a try now... – Martin Asenov Mar 07 '12 at 15:39
5

The proper way to do this would be `Period.toStandardDuration().getMillis()`. – Louis Wasserman Mar 07 '12 at 16:11
@LouisWasserman if the duration contains months, that will not work! – Juvanis Aug 05 '14 at 15:41

yegor256 · Answer 2 · 2013-01-11T16:36:03.080

As suggested by Louis above, you should convert Period to Duration first, and then get its milliseconds:

long millis = period.toStandardDuration().getMillis();

Main reason for that is that ReadablePeriod doesn't know exactly how many milliseconds it has inside, until you apply it to a calendar. For example, how many milliseconds are in one month? We can't get an answer until this month is applied to a calendar.

Joda Time's Period.getMillis returns inaccurate number

2 Answers2