Question

I’m trying to have Joda print “0 seconds” if the input time is zero, but instead its just printing nothing at all.

The below example just outputs an empty string. Whats going on here?

PeriodFormatter hoursMinutesSeconds = new PeriodFormatterBuilder()
    .appendHours().appendSuffix(" hour", " hours")
    .appendSeparator(", ", " and ")
    .appendMinutes()
    .appendSuffix(" minute", " minutes")
    .appendSeparator(" and ")
    .printZeroRarelyFirst()
    .appendSeconds()
    .appendSuffix(" second", " seconds")
    .toFormatter();

System.out.println(hoursMinutesSeconds.print(new Period(0, 0, 0, 500)));

Answer 1

You need an early printZeroAlways and move your printZeroRarelyFirst up a bit to make it work to say 0 hours.

import org.joda.time.Period;
import org.joda.time.format.PeriodFormatter;
import org.joda.time.format.PeriodFormatterBuilder;

public class TestFormat {

  public static void main(String[] args) {
    PeriodFormatter hoursMinutesSeconds = new PeriodFormatterBuilder()
    .printZeroAlways()
    .appendHours().appendSuffix(" hour", " hours")
    .printZeroRarelyFirst()
    .appendSeparator(", ", " and ")
    .appendMinutes()
    .appendSuffix(" minute", " minutes")
    .appendSeparator(" and ")
    .appendSeconds()
    .appendSuffix(" second", " seconds")
    .toFormatter();
     System.out.println(hoursMinutesSeconds.print(new Period(0, 0, 0, 0)));
  }
}

You might prefer the printZeroRarelyLast solution, though, because the method above always gives you the 0 hours.

I prefer

public static void main(String[] args) {
    PeriodFormatter hoursMinutesSeconds = new PeriodFormatterBuilder()
    .printZeroRarelyLast()
    .appendHours().appendSuffix(" hour", " hours")
    .appendSeparator(", ", " and ")
    .appendMinutes()
    .appendSuffix(" minute", " minutes")
    .appendSeparator(" and ")
    .appendSeconds()
    .appendSuffix(" second", " seconds")
    .toFormatter();
     System.out.println(hoursMinutesSeconds.print(new Period(0, 0, 0, 0)));
}