What is the best way to retrieve the dates for last Monday and Friday

Question

I need to get the dates for Monday and Friday last week. To do this, i am getting the date of Monday this week and subtracting 7 days. This gives me the date for Monday last week.

To get the date for Friday i have to add 4. This confused me a bit because for some reason the first day of the week is Sunday as opposed to Monday here in the UK.

Anyway, here is how i am getting the dates.

            // Get the dates for last MON & FRI
        Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
        cal.setTime(date);

        cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK, Calendar.MONDAY);
        cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK, -7);

        cal.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY,0);
        cal.set(Calendar.MINUTE,0);
        cal.set(Calendar.SECOND,0);
        cal.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND,0);

        // Get the date on Friday
        cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK, 4);

        cal.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY,23);
        cal.set(Calendar.MINUTE,59);
        cal.set(Calendar.SECOND,59);
        cal.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND,0);

The above works but i am interested if there is anything wrong with the logic. I.e. will it work for Februarys, leap years etc.

Feel free to suggest a better solution/approach.

Thanks

Answer 1

tl;dr

get the dates for Monday and Friday last week

LocalDate                                           // Represent a date only, without a time-of-day, and without a time zone or offset.
.now                                                // Capture the current date as seen through the wall-clock time used by the people of a certain region (a time zone). 
( 
    ZoneId.of( "America/Montreal" ) 
)                                                   // Returns a `LocalDate` object.
.with                                               // Move to another date.
( 
    TemporalAdjusters.previous( DayOfWeek.MONDAY )  // Returns an implementation of the `TemporalAdjuster` interface.
)                                                   // Returns another `LocalDate` object, separate and distinct from our original `LocalDate` object. Per the immutable objects design pattern. 

Avoid legacy date-time classes

The other Answers use the troublesome old legacy date-time classes now supplanted by the java.time questions.

LocalDate

The LocalDate class represents a date-only value without time-of-day and without time zone.

A time zone is crucial in determining a date. For any given moment, the date varies around the globe by zone. For example, a few minutes after midnight in Paris France is a new day while still “yesterday” in Montréal Québec.

ZoneId z = ZoneId.of( “America/Montreal” );
LocalDate today = LocalDate.now( z );

TemporalAdjuster

The TemporalAdjuster interface provides for adjustments to move from one date-time value to another. Find handy implementations in the TemporalAdjusters class (note the plural 's'). The previous adjuster finds any specified object from the DayOfWeek enum.

The Question does not exactly define “last week”. Last seven days? Standard Monday-Sunday period? Localized week, such as Sunday-Saturday in the United States? The week prior to today’s week or including today’s partial week?

I will assume the prior seven days were intended.

LocalDate previousMonday = today.with( TemporalAdjusters.previous( DayOfWeek.MONDAY ) ) ;
LocalDate previousFriday = today.with( TemporalAdjusters.previous( DayOfWeek.FRIDAY ) ) ;

By the way, if you want to consider the initial date if it happens to already be the desired day-of-week, use alternate TemporalAdjuster implementations: previousOrSame or nextOrSame.

---

About java.time

The java.time framework is built into Java 8 and later. These classes supplant the troublesome old legacy date-time classes such as java.util.Date, Calendar, & SimpleDateFormat.

The Joda-Time project, now in maintenance mode, advises migration to the java.time classes.

To learn more, see the Oracle Tutorial. And search Stack Overflow for many examples and explanations. Specification is JSR 310.

You may exchange java.time objects directly with your database. Use a JDBC driver compliant with JDBC 4.2 or later. No need for strings, no need for java.sql.* classes.

Where to obtain the java.time classes?

• Java SE 8, Java SE 9, and later
  • Built-in.
  • Part of the standard Java API with a bundled implementation.
  • Java 9 adds some minor features and fixes.
• Java SE 6 and Java SE 7
  • Much of the java.time functionality is back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport.
• Android
  • Later versions of Android bundle implementations of the java.time classes.
  • For earlier Android (<26), the ThreeTenABP project adapts ThreeTen-Backport (mentioned above). See How to use ThreeTenABP….

The ThreeTen-Extra project extends java.time with additional classes. This project is a proving ground for possible future additions to java.time. You may find some useful classes here such as Interval, YearWeek, YearQuarter, and more.

Answer 2

Note: For Java 8 and above please take a look at Basil Bourque's answer (link).
Java 8 introduced a new time/date API which offers most of Joda-Time's functionality.

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Joda-Time offers really nice methods for problems like that.

Getting the dates for Monday and Friday last week would look something like this using Joda Time:

DateTime today = DateTime.now();
DateTime sameDayLastWeek = today.minusWeeks(1);
DateTime mondayLastWeek = sameDayLastWeek.withDayOfWeek(DateTimeConstants.MONDAY);
DateTime fridayLastWeek = sameDayLastWeek.withDayOfWeek(DateTimeConstants.FRIDAY);

You can create DateTime objects from java.util.Date objects and vice versa so it is easy to use with Java dates.

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Using the above code with the date

DateTime today = new DateTime("2012-09-30");

results in "2012-09-17" for Monday and "2012-09-21" for Friday, setting the date to

DateTime tomorrow = new DateTime("2012-10-01");

results in "2012-09-24" for Monday and "2012-09-28" for Friday.