Chapter 20. Date Calculator

If you've been developing in Java for any serious length of time, you know one thing to be true--working with dates is awful. The java.util.Date class, with its related classes, shipped with 1.0, and Calendar and its related classes coming along in 1.1. Even early on, problems were apparent. For example, the Javadoc on Date says this--Unfortunately, the API for these functions was not amenable to internationalization. As a result, Calendar was introduced in 1.1. Sure, there have been other enhancements down through the years, but given Java's strict adherence to backwards compatibility, there's only so much the language architects can do. As much as they may want to fix those APIs, their hands are tied.

Fortunately, Java Specification Request (JSR 310) was filed. Led by Stephen Colebourne, an effort was begun to create a new API, based on the very popular open source library, Joda-Time. In this chapter, we'll take an in-depth look at this new API, then build a...