How to calculate time difference in java?

Question

I want to subtract two timeperiods say 16:00:00 from 19:00:00. Is there any java function for this? The results can be in milliseconds, seconds, or minutes.

Answer 1

Besides the most common approach with Period and Duration objects you can widen your knowledge with another way for dealing with time in Java.

Advanced Java 8 libraries. ChronoUnit for Differences.

ChronoUnit is a great way to determine how far apart two Temporal values are. Temporal includes LocalDate, LocalTime and so on.

LocalTime one = LocalTime.of(5,15);
LocalTime two = LocalTime.of(6,30);
LocalDate date = LocalDate.of(2019, 1, 29);

System.out.println(ChronoUnit.HOURS.between(one, two)); //1
System.out.println(ChronoUnit.MINUTES.between(one, two)); //75
System.out.println(ChronoUnit.MINUTES.between(one, date)); //DateTimeException

First example shows that between truncates rather than rounds.

The second shows how easy it is to count different units.

And the last example reminds us that we should not mess up with dates and times in Java :)