Question

I’m trying to compare two dates with the current date. It seems not to work when I try to know if a date is the same as the current date. Here’s what I do in my code :

//BeginDate is set earlier

Date myDate= new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy").parse(BeginDate);
Date now = new Date();

    System.out.println("Now : " + now);
    System.out.println("myDate : " + myDate);
    System.out.println("equals : " + myDate.equals(now));
    System.out.println(myDate.compareTo(now));

And I get this in the console :

Now : Thu Dec 29 00:28:45 CET 2011
myDate : Thu Dec 29 00:00:00 CET 2011
equals : false
-1

The first comparison should return true and the second “0” right ? Or am I missing something ?

Answer 1

Your comparison is failing because you need to format now so that both dates have the same format and thus may be compared.

Or, if you prefer, you can convert dates into strings and perform the comparison:

    String beginDate = "28/12/2011";
    Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();
    DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
    String nowStr = df.format(new Date());
    System.out.println("equals : " + beginDate.equals(nowStr));