How do I calculate someone's age in Java?

Question

I want to return an age in years as an int in a Java method. What I have now is the following where getBirthDate() returns a Date object (with the birth date ;-)):

Answer 1

public int getAge(String birthdate, String today){
    // birthdate = "1986-02-22"
    // today = "2014-09-16"

    // String class has a split method for splitting a string
    // split()
    // birth[0] = 1986 as string
    // birth[1] = 02 as string
    // birth[2] = 22 as string
    // now[0] = 2014 as string
    // now[1] = 09 as string
    // now[2] = 16 as string
    // **birth** and **now** arrays are automatically contains 3 elements 
    // split method here returns 3 elements because of yyyy-MM-dd value
    String birth[] = birthdate.split("-");
    String now[] = today.split("-");
    int age = 0;

    // let us convert string values into integer values
    // with the use of Integer.parseInt()
    int ybirth = Integer.parseInt(birth[0]);
    int mbirth = Integer.parseInt(birth[1]);
    int dbirth = Integer.parseInt(birth[2]);

    int ynow = Integer.parseInt(now[0]);
    int mnow = Integer.parseInt(now[1]);
    int dnow = Integer.parseInt(now[2]);

    if(ybirth < ynow){ // has age if birth year is lesser than current year
        age = ynow - ybirth; // let us get the interval of birth year and current year
        if(mbirth == mnow){ // when birth month comes, it's ok to have age = ynow - ybirth if
            if(dbirth > dnow) // birth day is coming. need to subtract 1 from age. not yet a bday
                age--;
        }else if(mbirth > mnow){ age--; } // birth month is comming. need to subtract 1 from age            
    }

    return age;
}