Sum two dates in Java

Question

How can I add two dates in Java?

Example: The sum of \"2010-01-14 19:16:17\" \"0000-10-03 01:10:05\"
would result in \"2010-11-17 20:26:22\".

I know how

Answer 1

tl;dr

LocalDateTime later = 
    LocalDateTime
    .parse ( 
        "2010-01-14 19:16:17"
        .replace ( " " , "T" ) 
    )
    .plus( Period.parse ( "P10M3D" ) )
    .plus( Duration.parse ( "PT1H10M5S" ) ) 
;

ISO 8601

The representation of a span-of-time using the same format as a moment is creating confusion. A span is not at all the same as a moment.

Instead of using YYYY-MM-DD HH-MM-SS format for a span of time, I suggest using the standard ISO 8601 format of PnYnMnDTnHnMnS. In this format, the P marks the beginning (for "Period" presumably) and the T separates the years-month-days portion from the hours-minutes-seconds portion.

Example values:

• PT1H30M → One and a half hours.
• P3Y6M4DT12H30M5S → Three years, six months, four days, twelve hours, thirty minutes, and five seconds.
• P10M3DT1H10M5S → Your Question’s duration of 0000-10-03 01:10:05.

java.time

The Question and the other Answers use troublesome old date-time classes now outmoded by the java.time framework built into Java 8 and later. See Oracle Tutorial. Much of the java.time functionality has been back-ported to Java 6 & 7 in ThreeTen-Backport and further adapted to Android in ThreeTenABP.

The java.time classes use ISO 8601 formats by default when parsing and generating Strings that represent date-time values.

The Question does not provide any time zone info, so here we use the LocalDateTime class. If we know an offset-from-UTC we would use the OffsetDateTime class, and if even better we knew a time zone, we would use the ZonedDateTime class.

Spans of time in java.time are divided amongst a pair of classes. Years-months-days are represented by the Period class, and hours-minutes-seconds are handled by the Duration class.

Combining these times, we can indeed perform date-time math. Here we add a span of time to an starting date-time to get a resulting date-time. And we do so in very few lines of code. The result is indeed that expected by the Question.

We convert the input strings to canonical ISO 8601 format by replacing the SPACE in the middle with a T.

LocalDateTime ldt = LocalDateTime.parse ( "2010-01-14 19:16:17".replace ( " " , "T" ) );
//"0000-10-03 01:10:05"
Period period = Period.parse ( "P10M3D" );
Duration duration = Duration.parse ( "PT1H10M5S" );
LocalDateTime result = ldt.plus ( period ).plus ( duration );

Compare to the result expected in the Question.

LocalDateTime expectation = LocalDateTime.parse ( "2010-11-17 20:26:22".replace ( " " , "T" ) );
Boolean isSame = result.equals ( expectation );

Dump to console.

System.out.println ( "ldt: " + ldt + " + period: " + period + " + duration: " + duration + " is result: " + result + " compared to expectation: " + expectation + " is the same: " + isSame );

ldt: 2010-01-14T19:16:17 + period: P10M3D + duration: PT1H10M5S is result: 2010-11-17T20:26:22 compared to expectation: 2010-11-17T20:26:22 is the same: true