Question

I am using Joda Time 2.1 library.

I have written a method to compare if a given date is between a date range of not. I want it to be inclusive to the start date and end date.I have used LocalDate as I don’t want to consider the time part only date part.

Below is the code for it.

isDateBetweenRange(LocalDate start,LocalDate end,LocalDate target){

       System.out.println("Start Date : "
              +start.toDateTimeAtStartOfDay(DateTimeZone.forID("EST"));

       System.out.println("Target Date : "
              +targettoDateTimeAtStartOfDay(DateTimeZone.forID("EST"));

       System.out.println("End Date : "
              +end.toDateTimeAtStartOfDay(DateTimeZone.forID("EST"));

       System.out.println(target.isAfter(start));

       System.out.println(target.isBefore(end));
}

The output of above method is :

Start Date: 2012-11-20T00:00:00.000-05:00
Target Date: 2012-11-20T00:00:00.000-05:00
End Date : 2012-11-21T00:00:00.000-05:00
target.isAfter(start) : false
target.isBefore(end) : true

My problem is target.isAfter(start) is false even if the target date and start are having the same values.

I want that target >= start but here it considers only target > start.
I want it inclusive.

Does it mean that isAfter method finds a match exclusively ?

I have gone through the javadoc for Joda Time, but didn’t found anything about it.

Answer 1

Yes, isAfter is exclusive, otherwise it should probably have been named isEqualOrAfter or something similar.

Solution: Use “not before” instead of “after”, and “not after” instead of “before”.

boolean isBetweenInclusive(LocalDate start, LocalDate end, LocalDate target) {
    return !target.isBefore(start) && !target.isAfter(end);
}