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

Answer 1

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.