A strange behavior from java.util.Calendar on February

Question

I faced with a strange behavior from java.util.Calendar:

import static org.junit.Assert.*;
import org.junit.Test;

import java.util.Calendar;

public class Tester1 {
    @Test
    public void test_monthOfDate() {
        assertEquals(1, monthOfDate(2013, 1, 30)); // OK
        assertEquals(1, monthOfDate(2013, 1, 31)); // OK

        // Start of February
        assertEquals(2, monthOfDate(2013, 2, 1));  // FAIL
        assertEquals(2, monthOfDate(2013, 2, 28)); // FAIL
        // to the end of it

        // and after that it is okay also
        assertEquals(3, monthOfDate(2013, 3, 1));  // OK
    }

    public int monthOfDate(int year, int month, int day) {
        Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
        cal.set(Calendar.YEAR, year);
        cal.set(Calendar.MONTH, month - 1);

        // just a simple get! but seems it is very important
        cal.get(Calendar.MONTH);
        //

        cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, day);

        return cal.get(Calendar.MONTH) + 1;
    }
}

I want to know why exactly this is happening?

Answer 1

The problem is that you're starting off with a calendar on January 30th 2013.

You're then setting the year to 2013 - that's not a problem.

You're then setting the month to 1 (i.e. February). What do you expect to happen here? What actually happens is that it will remember that it needs to set the month to 1, but not recompute the actual time value. The time value will be recomputed on your call to get though, as per the documentation (emphsis mine):

set(f, value) changes calendar field f to value. In addition, it sets an internal member variable to indicate that calendar field f has been changed. Although calendar field f is changed immediately, the calendar's time value in milliseconds is not recomputed until the next call to get(), getTime(), getTimeInMillis(), add(), or roll() is made. Thus, multiple calls to set() do not trigger multiple, unnecessary computations. As a result of changing a calendar field using set(), other calendar fields may also change, depending on the calendar field, the calendar field value, and the calendar system. In addition, get(f) will not necessarily return value set by the call to the set method after the calendar fields have been recomputed. The specifics are determined by the concrete calendar class.

When you try to change "January 30th" to "February 30th" and force a computation, what actually happens is that you end up on March 2nd on my box - but it may differ on your implementation.

The best fixes are:

• Use Calendar.set(year, month, date) instead to avoid this ordering issue
• Use Joda Time as a more sensible API in the first place.