How to compare two Dates without the time portion?

Question

Update: while Joda Time was a fine recommendation at the time, use the java.time library from Java 8+ instead where possible.

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My preference is to use Joda Time which makes this incredibly easy:

DateTime first = ...;
DateTime second = ...;

LocalDate firstDate = first.toLocalDate();
LocalDate secondDate = second.toLocalDate();

return firstDate.compareTo(secondDate);

EDIT: As noted in comments, if you use DateTimeComparator.getDateOnlyInstance() it's even simpler :)

// TODO: consider extracting the comparator to a field.
return DateTimeComparator.getDateOnlyInstance().compare(first, second);

("Use Joda Time" is the basis of almost all SO questions which ask about java.util.Date or java.util.Calendar. It's a thoroughly superior API. If you're doing anything significant with dates/times, you should really use it if you possibly can.)

If you're absolutely forced to use the built in API, you should create an instance of Calendar with the appropriate date and using the appropriate time zone. You could then set each field in each calendar out of hour, minute, second and millisecond to 0, and compare the resulting times. Definitely icky compared with the Joda solution though :)

The time zone part is important: java.util.Date is always based on UTC. In most cases where I've been interested in a date, that's been a date in a specific time zone. That on its own will force you to use Calendar or Joda Time (unless you want to account for the time zone yourself, which I don't recommend.)

Quick reference for android developers

//Add joda library dependency to your build.gradle file
dependencies {
     ...
     implementation 'joda-time:joda-time:2.9.9'
}

Sample code (example)

DateTimeComparator dateTimeComparator = DateTimeComparator.getDateOnlyInstance();

Date myDateOne = ...;
Date myDateTwo = ...;

int retVal = dateTimeComparator.compare(myDateOne, myDateTwo);

if(retVal == 0)
   //both dates are equal
else if(retVal < 0)
   //myDateOne is before myDateTwo
else if(retVal > 0)
   //myDateOne is after myDateTwo

Apache commons-lang is almost ubiquitous. So what about this?

if (DateUtils.isSameDay(date1, date2)) {
    // it's same
} else if (date1.before(date2)) {
   // it's before
} else {
   // it's after
}

If you really want to use the java.util.Date, you would do something like this:

public class TimeIgnoringComparator implements Comparator<Date> {
  public int compare(Date d1, Date d2) {
    if (d1.getYear() != d2.getYear()) 
        return d1.getYear() - d2.getYear();
    if (d1.getMonth() != d2.getMonth()) 
        return d1.getMonth() - d2.getMonth();
    return d1.getDate() - d2.getDate();
  }
}

or, using a Calendar instead (preferred, since getYear() and such are deprecated)

public class TimeIgnoringComparator implements Comparator<Calendar> {
  public int compare(Calendar c1, Calendar c2) {
    if (c1.get(Calendar.YEAR) != c2.get(Calendar.YEAR)) 
        return c1.get(Calendar.YEAR) - c2.get(Calendar.YEAR);
    if (c1.get(Calendar.MONTH) != c2.get(Calendar.MONTH)) 
        return c1.get(Calendar.MONTH) - c2.get(Calendar.MONTH);
    return c1.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH) - c2.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH);
  }
}

My preference would be to use the Joda library insetad of java.util.Date directly, as Joda makes a distinction between date and time (see YearMonthDay and DateTime classes).

However, if you do wish to use java.util.Date I would suggest writing a utility method; e.g.

public static Date setTimeToMidnight(Date date) {
    Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();

    calendar.setTime( date );
    calendar.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 0);
    calendar.set(Calendar.MINUTE, 0);
    calendar.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
    calendar.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);

    return calendar.getTime();
}

Any opinions on this alternative?

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");
sdf.format(date1).equals(sdf.format(date2));

If you want to compare only the month, day and year of two dates, following code works for me:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");
sdf.format(date1).equals(sdf.format(date2));

Thanks Rob.