java.util.Date - Deleting three months from a date?

Question

Here's the plain JDK version, it needs the Calendar class as a helper:

Date referenceDate = new Date();
Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance(); 
c.setTime(referenceDate); 
c.add(Calendar.MONTH, -3);
return c.getTime();

But you should seriously consider using the Joda library, because of various shortcomings of the Date and Calendar classes. With Joda you can do the following:

new DateTime().minusMonths(3).toDate();

Or if you want to subtract from a given date instead of the current:

new DateTime(referenceDate).minusMonths(3).toDate();

Update for Java 8: With Java 8 you can also use the new JSR 310 API (which is inspired by Joda):

LocalDateTime.from(referenceDate.toInstant()).minusMonths(3);

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.setTime(new Date());
cal.add(Calendar.MONTH, -3);

Set your date using setTime method.

Using Java 8 you can do it like this,

Date d = Date.from(LocalDate.now().minusMonths(3).atStartOfDay(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());

The LocalDate class has a lot of methods to help you make easy computations about dates like the above,

// Add 2 months
Date d = Date.from(LocalDate.now().plusMonths(2).atStartOfDay(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());
// Add 5 days
Date d = Date.from(LocalDate.now().plusDays(5).atStartOfDay(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());
// Minus 1 day and 1 year
Date d = Date.from(LocalDate.now().minusYears(1).minusDays(1).atStartOfDay(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());

In order to compute time you can use the LocalDateTime class,

// Minus 1 year, minus 1 days, plus 1 hour
Date d = Date.from(LocalDateTime.now().minusYears(1).minusDays(1).plusHours(1).toLocalDate().atStartOfDay(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant());

I always recommend Joda for this sort of stuff. It has a much nicer API, and doesn't suffer from threading issues that the standard Java date/time has (e.g. issues with SimpleDateFormat, or general mutability).

e.g.

DateTime result = dt.minusMonths(3);

Ok with java.sql.Date (subclass of java.util.Date) and JDK's 8 LocalDate help you can do it in one line ;)

Date date = java.sql.Date.valueOf(LocalDate.now().minus(3, ChronoUnit.MONTHS));

The Date class itself isn't enough (+: You've got to use the Calendar class here

Something along these lines

GregorianCalendar lCalendar = new GregorianCalendar();
lCalendar.setTime( aDate );
lCalendar.add(Calendar.MONTH, -3);

p.s. the snippet above is not tested to be compilable.

You want today - 3 Month formatted as dd MMMM yyyy

     SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("dd MMMM yyyy");

     Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance(); 
     c.setTime(new Date()); 
     c.add(Calendar.MONTH, -3);

     Date d = c.getTime();
     String res = format.format(d);

     System.out.println(res);

So this code can do the job ;)