Why are Java Date objects designed so that you can't get the date? [closed]

Question

Why does Java make it not obvious how to get the day of the month from a Date object?

.getDay() was deprecated, it is recommended to use Calendar.get(Calendar.MONTH)

This makes little sense to me and I was curious what the rationale behind this deprecation is.

I have a Date object and I just want the day. It's the most natural thing ever and I can't invoke it. This design is wrong and therefore my code is not working the way it should:

private String getIngivningsDag() {

    return ""+ingivningsDatum.getDate();
}



private String getIngivningsMonth() {

    return ""+ingivningsDatum.getmonth();
}

private String getIngivningsYear() {

    return ""+ingivningsDatum.getYear();
}

Update

here's the "solution":

public String getIngivningsDag() {

    Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
    cal.setTime(ingivningsDatum);
    return cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK_IN_MONTH)+"";
}

Here's how it should look simple and good without the design errors of Java and using method parameters instead of strange Class methods and factories:

public String getIngivningsDag() {

    return ingivningsDatum.getDay(Calendar.GREGORIAN, "SE");
}

Answer 1

The Date means a moment of time, but exact day/month/time/etc is different in different calendars and timezones. So, to know what day is a particular timestamp, you should use Calendar Timezone and DateFormat. E.g. jdk has at least two calendars implementation - BuddistCalendar and GregorianCalendar. Default calendar depends on user's preferences.

Also, have a look at Jodatime library - it is has more features and makes more sense to manage dates in Java.