How to Calculate a Time Span in Java and Format the Output

How can I calculate a time span in Java and format the output?

^{Since everyone shouts "YOODAA!!!" but noone posts a concrete example, here's my contribution.}

You could also do this with Joda-Time. Use Period to represent a period. To format the period in the desired human representation, use PeriodFormatter which you can build by PeriodFormatterBuilder.

Here's a kickoff example:

DateTime myBirthDate = new DateTime(1978, 3, 26, 12, 35, 0, 0);
DateTime now = new DateTime();
Period period = new Period(myBirthDate, now);

PeriodFormatter formatter = new PeriodFormatterBuilder()
    .appendYears().appendSuffix(" year, ", " years, ")
    .appendMonths().appendSuffix(" month, ", " months, ")
    .appendWeeks().appendSuffix(" week, ", " weeks, ")
    .appendDays().appendSuffix(" day, ", " days, ")
    .appendHours().appendSuffix(" hour, ", " hours, ")
    .appendMinutes().appendSuffix(" minute, ", " minutes, ")
    .appendSeconds().appendSuffix(" second", " seconds")
    .printZeroNever()
    .toFormatter();

String elapsed = formatter.print(period);
System.out.println(elapsed + " ago");

Much more clear and concise, isn't it?

This prints by now

32 years, 1 month, 1 week, 5 days, 6 hours, 56 minutes, 24 seconds ago

^{_{(Cough, old, cough)}}

How can I calculate a time difference in Java?

String time1 = "16:00:00";
String time2 = "19:00:00";

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss");
Date date1 = format.parse(time1);
Date date2 = format.parse(time2);
long difference = date2.getTime() - date1.getTime(); 

Difference is in milliseconds.

I modified sfaizs post.

Is there an easy way to Calculate and format time/date intervals in java?

Have you tried Joda Time?

Calculate date/time difference in java

try

long diffSeconds = diff / 1000 % 60;  
long diffMinutes = diff / (60 * 1000) % 60; 
long diffHours = diff / (60 * 60 * 1000);

NOTE: this assumes that diff is non-negative.

How to calculate relative time spans using Java (code converting problem)?

You need to gain a deeper understanding of what this method actually does. Literally translating code from C# to Java won't give you a good solution and gets you stuck on language-specific details.

The two lines basically calculate the (absolute) difference in seconds of a timestamp to the current time. This can be written in Java as follows:

Duration duration = Duration.between(LocalDateTime.now(), timestamp);
long delta = duration.abs().getSeconds();

I'm just addressing your actual question here on how to transform these two lines. The provided snippet is not valid Java code and some parts are missing. delta is the difference in seconds which does not necessarily need to be a double. The argument you pass to your method should be named anything else than now because this is the timestamp you want to compare to the current time inside the method.

Calculate duration between two hours in Java

The basic flaw here is that you want the NEAREST distance between two times. When you are constructing your date objects, even though you only format for Hour:Minute:Second it still stores the day/month/year etc... For the dates 12:03:00 and 00:00:00 it defaults them to the same day, so the difference from (Midnight to Noon) is what your getting not (Noon to Midnight) of the next day. The solution for you would be to check if the times are less than 12 (military time) and if so add 1 to the day.

Here's How you do it:

    String t1 = "12:03:00";
    String t2 = "00:00:00";
    SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss");

    Date d1 = sdf.parse(t1);
    Date d2 = sdf.parse(t2);
    Calendar c1 = Calendar.getInstance();
    Calendar c2 = Calendar.getInstance();
    c1.setTime(d1);
    c2.setTime(d2);

    if(c2.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY) < 12) {
        c2.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, c2.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR) + 1);
    }
    long elapsed = c2.getTimeInMillis() - c1.getTimeInMillis();

How to calculate time ago in Java?

Take a look at the PrettyTime library.

It's quite simple to use:

import org.ocpsoft.prettytime.PrettyTime;

PrettyTime p = new PrettyTime();
System.out.println(p.format(new Date()));
// prints "moments ago"

You can also pass in a locale for internationalized messages:

PrettyTime p = new PrettyTime(new Locale("fr"));
System.out.println(p.format(new Date()));
// prints "à l'instant"

As noted in the comments, Android has this functionality built into the android.text.format.DateUtils class.

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