The new Date and Time API is moved to the java.time package and the Joda time format is followed.

The classes in the new API are immutable and, hence, thread-safe. The new API contains lots of classes that allow us to have more fine-grained control over our date and time representation.

Below is the list of all the classes in the java.time package.

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In this lesson, we will look at the LocalDate class of the java.time package. This class holds only the date part without a time-zone in the ISO-8601 calendar system. It represents a date in ISO format (yyyy-MM-dd).

Let’s look at some of the common use cases that can be solved through this class.

a) Getting the current date

We can get the current date by using the static now() method in the LocalDate class.

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import java.time.LocalDate;



class DateTimeDemo {

    public static void main( String args[] ) {

        // now() method will return the current date.

        LocalDate date = LocalDate.now();

        System.out.println(date);

    }

}

b) Getting a specific date using of() method

We can get a specific date by using the static of() method in the LocalDate class. This method has two overloaded versions.

Each of them is shown in the example below.

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import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.Month;
class DateTimeDemo {
    public static void main( String args[] ) {
        // of(int year, int month, int dayOfMonth)
        LocalDate date = LocalDate.of(2019, 05, 03);
        System.out.println(date);
        // of(int year, Month month, int dayOfMonth)
        date = LocalDate.of(2019, Month.AUGUST, 03);
        System.out.println(date);
    }
}

c) Getting a specific date using parse() method

We can get a specific date by using the static parse() method in the LocalDate class. This method has two overloaded versions.

Each of them is shown in the example below.

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import java.time.LocalDate;

import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;



class DateTimeDemo {

    public static void main( String args[] ) {



        // parse(CharSequence text)

        LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse("2015-02-12");

        System.out.println(date);



        // parse(CharSequence text, DateTimeFormatter formatter)

        date = LocalDate.parse("12/02/2012", DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MM/dd/yyyy"));

        System.out.println(date);

    }

}

d) Adding days and months to a given date.

We can use a whole range of addition operation methods that can be used for adding days, weeks, and months to a given date.

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import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit;
class DateTimeDemo {
    public static void main( String args[] ) {
        // Adding 4 days to the given date.
        LocalDate date = LocalDate.parse("2015-02-12").plusDays(4);
        System.out.println(date);
         
         // Adding 4 months to the given date.
        date = LocalDate.parse("2015-02-12").plus(4, ChronoUnit.MONTHS);
        System.out.println(date);
    }
}

e) Getting day of week

We can get the day of the week using getDayOfWeek() method.

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import java.time.DayOfWeek;

import java.time.LocalDate;



class DateTimeDemo {

    public static void main( String args[] ) {



        DayOfWeek dayOfWeek = LocalDate.parse("2017-04-06").getDayOfWeek();

        

        System.out.println(dayOfWeek);

    }

}

f) Checking if a date is before or after a given date.

We can check if a date comes before or after another given date by using the isBefore() and isAfter() methods.

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import java.time.LocalDate;



class DateTimeDemo {

    public static void main( String args[] ) {



        // Using isBefore() to check if the date is before a given date.

        boolean isBefore = LocalDate.parse("2020-03-12")

                .isBefore(LocalDate.parse("2018-06-14"));

        System.out.println(isBefore);



        // Using isAfter() to check if the date is after a given date.

        boolean isAfter = LocalDate.parse("2020-03-12")

                .isAfter(LocalDate.parse("2018-06-14"));

        System.out.println(isAfter);

        

    }

}

This has been a basic introduction to the LocalDate class and its utilities. In the next lesson, we will look at LocalTime.

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