Question

Why is today’s date shown as before date ?

import java.text.DateFormat;
import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.List;

public class Test {

    public static void main(String args[]) throws ParseException {

        Date date = new Date();

        DateFormat dateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");

        List currentObject = new ArrayList();

        currentObject.add("2012-09-27");
        Date ExpDate = dateFormat.parse((String) currentObject.get(0));

        if (ExpDate.before(date)) {
            System.out.println("true");
        }

        else {
            System.out.println("false");
        }
    }

}

Any ideas?

Answer 1

Date date = new Date();

will yield the time too, but this

currentObject.add("2012-09-27");
dateFormat.parse((String) currentObject.get(0));

will default to 00:00:00, as your dateFormat excludes the time thus causing the time-part to be set to 0h.

So it’s correct:

ExpDate: 2012-09-27 00:00:00

is earlier than

date: 2012-09-27 <some time later than midnight>