Not able to get difference between two datetime?

Question

Please check the below code. I am trying to get the difference but every time getting 0. Can anybody please point me what is the problem with below code?

SimpleDateFormat sDateFormat = new SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss dd/mm/yyyy");
try {

    long d1 = sDateFormat.parse("10:04:00 04/04/2014").getTime();
    long d2 = sDateFormat.parse("10:09:00 04/04/2014").getTime();

    long difference = d2 - d1;

    Log.i(TAG,">> Difference = "+difference);

} catch (ParseException e) {
    e.printStackTrace();
}

@Hitendra did u tried this [link](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10325117/java-android-calculate-days-between-2-dates-and-present-the-result-in-a-spec) — W I Z A R D, Apr 10 '14 at 08:37

score 4 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 10 '14 at 08:25

4

your formatter does not fit the date format used.

Try:

new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss dd/MM/yyyy");

edited Apr 10 '14 at 08:25

Hamid Shatu

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answered Apr 10 '14 at 08:16

light_303

2,101
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score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 10 '14 at 09:04

From Android Developer documentation of SimpleDateFormat, you can see M is for Month and m is for minute...

M   month in year   (Text)      M:1 MM:01 MMM:Jan MMMM:January MMMMM:J
m   minute in hour  (Number)    30

So, you should change the date format from this...

hh:mm:ss dd/mm/yyyy

to this...

hh:mm:ss dd/MM/yyyy

I hope this format correction will solve your problem.

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 01 '21 at 10:58

Your format, hh:mm:ss dd/mm/yyyy has two problems:

h is used for 12-Hour time format i.e. a time format with AM/PM marker which is not the case with your date-time strings. You need to use H which is used for a 24-Hour time format.
m is not used for a month. For a month, you need to use M.

Apart from this, the legacy date-time API (java.util date-time types and their formatting API, SimpleDateFormat) are outdated and error-prone. It is recommended to stop using them completely and switch to java.time, the modern date-time API^*.

Demo using modern date-time API:

import java.time.LocalDateTime;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;
import java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit;

public class Main {
    public static void main(String args[]) {
        DateTimeFormatter dtf = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("H:m:s d/M/u");
        LocalDateTime start = LocalDateTime.parse("10:04:00 04/04/2014", dtf);
        LocalDateTime end = LocalDateTime.parse("10:09:00 04/04/2014", dtf);
        long diff = ChronoUnit.MILLIS.between(start, end);
        System.out.println(diff);
    }
}

Output:

Learn more about the the modern date-time API^* from Trail: Date Time.

^{* For any reason, if you have to stick to Java 6 or Java 7, you can use ThreeTen-Backport which backports most of the java.time functionality to Java 6 & 7. If you are working for an Android project and your Android API level is still not compliant with Java-8, check Java 8+ APIs available through desugaring and How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project.}

Not able to get difference between two datetime?

3 Answers3