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Get 12 hours before and after current time

I'm having an issue working with time in Java. I don't really understand how to efficiently solve comparing the time of now and 12 hours before and after
I get a set of starting times for a show from an API and then compare that starting time with LocalTime.now(). It looks something like this:
SimpleDateFormat sdt = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss");
String temp = sdt.format(Local.time(now));
LocalTime secondTime = LocalTime.parse(parts1[0]);
LocalTime firstTime = LocalTime.parse(temp);
int diff = (int) ((MINUTES.between(firstDay, secondDay) + 1440) % 1440);
if(diff <= 720){
return true;
}
Where my idea is that if the difference between the two times is smaller than 720 minutes (12 hours) I should get the correct output. And this works for the 12 hours before now. I thought I might need to swap the parameters of .between, to get the other side of the day. That counts it completely wrong (If the time now is 15:00:00 it would accept all the times until 22:00:00 the same day). Is this just a really bad way of comparing two times? Or is it just my math that lacks understanding of what I'm trying to do?
Thanks

Using the 'new' (not that new) Java 8 time API:
Instant now = Instant.now();
Instant hoursAfter = now.plus(12, ChronoUnit.HOURS);
Instant hoursBefore = now.minus(12, ChronoUnit.HOURS);

First, doing this kind of operations on java.time.LocalTime won't work! Or at least only if the time is "12:00:00" …
That is because you will have an over-/underflow when you add/substract 12 hours from any other time.
So your starting point should be to go for java.time.LocalDateTime (at least, although I would go for java.time.Instant). Now you can handle the over-/underflow, as you will get another day when adding or subtracting 12 hours.
How this works is shown in this anwswer: LocalDateTime allows nearly the same operations as Instant.

Using instances of GregorianCalendar to determine time passed?

I am working on a project in my CIS 163 class that is effectively a campsite reservation system. The bulk of the code was provided and I just have to add certain functionalities to it. Currently I need to be able to determine how much time has passed between 2 different GregorianCalendar instances (one being the current date, the other being a predetermined "check out") represented by days. I haven't been able to figure out quite how to do this, and was hoping someone here might be able to help me out.

The GregorianCalendar is old and you shouldn't really use it anymore. It was cumbersome and was replaced by the "new" java.time module since Java 8.
Still, if you need to compare using GC instances, you could easily calculate time using milliseconds between dates, like this:
GregorianCalendar date1 = new GregorianCalendar();
GregorianCalendar date2 = new GregorianCalendar();
// Adding 15 days after the first date
date2.add(GregorianCalendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 15);
long duration = (date2.getTimeInMillis() - date1.getTimeInMillis() )
/ ( 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24) ;
System.out.println(duration);
If you want to use the new Time API, the following code would work.
LocalDate date1 = LocalDate.now();
LocalDate date2 = date1.plusDays(15);
Period period = Period.between(date1, date2);
int diff = period.getDays();
System.out.println(diff);
If you need to convert between the types (e.g. you're working with legacy code), you can do it like this:
LocalDate date3 = gcDate1.toInstant().atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toLocalDate();
LocalDate date4 = gcDate2.toInstant().atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toLocalDate();
Also I'm pretty sure this question must've been asked over and over again, so make sure you search properly before asking.

Since you have been forced to use the old and poorly designed GregorianCalendar class, the first thing you should do is convert each of the two GregorianCalendar objects to a modern type. Since Java 8 GregorianCalendar has a method that converts it to ZonedDateTime. Check the documentation, I include a link below.
Now that you’ve got two ZonedDateTime objects, there are different paths depending on your exact requirements. Often one will use Duration.between() for finding the duration, the amount of time between them in hours, minutes, seconds and fraction of second. If you know that you will always need just one of those time units, you may instead use for example ChronoUnit.HOURS.between() or ChronoUnit.MILLISECONDS.between(). If you need to count days, use ChronoUnit.DAYS.between().
If instead you need the time in months and days, you should instead use Period.between().
Links
Documentation:
GregorianCalendar (long outdated, don’t use unless forced to)
Duration
ChronoUnit
Period
Oracle tutorial: Date Time explaining how to use java.time, the modern Java date and time API to which ZonedDateTIme, Duration, ChronoUnit and Period belong.

Converting epoch time to the hour

Given an epoch time: eg (1513213212) I should get 1 since its 1 am right now UTC. How would I go about converting it into the hour of the day? Is it possible to do it just using math (division, mod)?

It would be close to impossible to do it by using maths only. (Leap year and all). It's better to use established APIs which will do all the hard work.
You can use following method to do this.
Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.setTimeInMillis(1513213212* 1000L);
cal.setTimeZone(TimeZone.getTimeZone("UTC"));
System.out.println(cal.get(Calendar.HOUR));//12 hour clock
System.out.println(cal.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));//24 hour clock

Use java.time, the modern Java date and time API also known as JSR-310:
LocalTime timeOfDay = Instant.ofEpochSecond(1513213212L)
.atOffset(ZoneOffset.UTC)
.toLocalTime();
System.out.println(timeOfDay);
int hourOfDay = timeOfDay.getHour();
System.out.println(hourOfDay);
This prints:
01:00:12
1
Even if you just wanted to do the math, I would still prefer to use standard library methods for it:
long epochSeconds = 1513213212L;
// convert the seconds to days and back to seconds to get the seconds in a whole number of days
long secondsInWholeDays = TimeUnit.DAYS.toSeconds(TimeUnit.SECONDS.toDays(epochSeconds));
long hourOfDay = TimeUnit.SECONDS.toHours(epochSeconds - secondsInWholeDays);
System.out.println(hourOfDay);
This too prints 1.
Your intention was “Given an epoch time: eg (1513213212) I should get 1 since it’s 1 AM right now UTC.” Which of the above code snippets in your opinion most clearly expresses this intention? This is what I would use for making my pick.
While MadProgrammer is surely correct in his/her comment that date and time arithmetic is complicated and that you should therefore leave it to the date and time API, I believe that this is one of the rare cases where not too complicated math gives the correct answer. It depends on it being safe to ignore the issue of leap seconds, and if going for the math solution, you should make sure to check this assumption. Personally I would not use it anyway.

Converting duration to years in Java8 Date API?

I have a date in the far past.
I found out what the duration is between this date and now.
Now I would like to know - how much is this in years?
I came up withthis solution using Java8 API.
This is a monstrous solution, since I have to convert the duration to Days manually first, because there will be an UnsupportedTemporalTypeException otherwise - LocalDate.plus(SECONDS) is not supported for whatever reason.
Even if the compiler allows this call.
Is there a less verbous possibility to convert Duration to years?
LocalDate dateOne = LocalDate.of(1415, Month.JULY, 6);
Duration durationSinceGuss1 = Duration.between(LocalDateTime.of(dateOne, LocalTime.MIDNIGHT),LocalDateTime.now());
long yearsSinceGuss = ChronoUnit.YEARS.between(LocalDate.now(),
LocalDate.now().plus(
TimeUnit.SECONDS.toDays(
durationSinceGuss1.getSeconds()),
ChronoUnit.DAYS) );
/*
* ERROR -
* LocalDate.now().plus(durationSinceGuss1) causes an Exception.
* Seconds are not Supported for LocalDate.plus()!!!
* WHY OR WHY CAN'T JAVA DO WHAT COMPILER ALLOWS ME TO DO?
*/
//long yearsSinceGuss = ChronoUnit.YEARS.between(LocalDate.now(), LocalDate.now().plus(durationSinceGuss) );
/*
* ERROR -
* Still an exception!
* Even on explicitly converting duration to seconds.
* Everything like above. Seconds are just not allowed. Have to convert them manually first e.g. to Days?!
* WHY OR WHY CAN'T YOU CONVERT SECONDS TO DAYS OR SOMETHING AUTOMATICALLY, JAVA?
*/
//long yearsSinceGuss = ChronoUnit.YEARS.between(LocalDate.now(), LocalDate.now().plus(durationSinceGuss.getSeconds(), ChronoUnit.SECONDS) );

Have you tried using LocalDateTime or DateTime instead of LocalDate? By design, the latter does not support hours/minutes/seconds/etc, hence the UnsupportedTemporalTypeException when you try to add seconds to it.
For example, this works:
LocalDateTime dateOne = LocalDateTime.of(1415, Month.JULY, 6, 0, 0);
Duration durationSinceGuss1 = Duration.between(dateOne, LocalDateTime.now());
long yearsSinceGuss = ChronoUnit.YEARS.between(LocalDateTime.now(), LocalDateTime.now().plus(durationSinceGuss1) );
System.out.println(yearsSinceGuss); // prints 600

Although the accepted answer of #Matt Ball tries to be clever in usage of the Java-8-API, I would throw in following objection:
Your requirement is not exact because there is no way to exactly convert seconds to years.
Reasons are:
Most important: Months have different lengths in days (from 28 to 31).
Years have sometimes leap days (29th of February) which have impact on calculating year deltas, too.
Gregorian cut-over: You start with a year in 1415 which is far before first gregorian calendar reform which cancelled full ten days, in England even 11 days and in Russia more. And years in old Julian calendar have different leap year rules.
Historic dates are not defined down to second precision. Can you for example describe the instant/moment of the battle of Hastings? We don't even know the exact hour, just the day. Assuming midnight at start of day is already a rough and probably wrong assumption.
Timezone effects which have impact on the length of day (23h, 24h, 25h or even different other lengths).
Leap seconds (exotic)
And maybe the most important objection to your code:
I cannot imagine that the supplier of the date with year 1415 has got the intention to interprete such a date as gregorian date.
I understand the wish for conversion from seconds to years but it can only be an approximation whatever you choose as solution. So if you have years like 1415 I would just suggest following very simple approximation:
Duration d = ...;
int approximateYears = (int) (d.toDays() / 365.2425);
For me, it is sufficient in historic context as long as we really want to use a second-based duration for such an use-case. It seems you cannot change the input you get from external sources (otherwise it would be a good idea to contact the duration supplier and ask if the count of days can be supplied instead). Anyway, you have to ask yourself what kind of year definition you want to apply.
Side notes:
Your complaint "WHY OR WHY CAN'T JAVA DO WHAT COMPILER ALLOWS ME TO DO?" does not match the character of new java.time-API.
You expect the API to be type-safe, but java.time (JSR-310) is not designed as type-safe and heavily relies on runtime-exceptions. The compiler will not help you with this API. Instead you have to consult the documentation in case of doubt if any given time unit is applicable on any given temporal type. You can find such an answer in the documentation of any concrete implementation of Temporal.isSupported(TemporalUnit). Anyway, the wish for compile-safety is understandable (and I have myself done my best to implement my own time library Time4J as type-safe) but the design of JSR-310 is already set in stone.
There is also a subtile pitfall if you apply a java.time.Duration on either LocalDateTime or Instant because the results are not exactly comparable (seconds of first type are defined on local timeline while seconds of Instant are defined on global timeline). So even if there is no runtime exception like in the accepted answer of #Matt Ball, we have to carefully consider if the result of such a calculation is reasonable and trustworthy.

Use Period to get the number of years between two LocalDate objects:
LocalDate before = LocalDate.of(1415, Month.JULY, 6);
LocalDate now = LocalDate.now();
Period period = Period.between(before, now);
int yearsPassed = period.getYears();
System.out.println(yearsPassed);

Java: date & time relative to current (server) time

We're using MySQL to store some dates. I'm looking to show these as relative time periods in the user interface: 2 hours ago, 3 days ago etc. (Like Twitter does for the updates for example)
Is there a well-known way to accomplish this, or should I get creative with it?
Just to be clear, I want to transform:
07/26/2009 12:20 -> '2 days ago'

As I understand your problem, the "Human Time" class is a solution.
check Date Formatting and Parsing for Humans in Java with HumanTime
.

I would take a look at the Joda library for performing this type of date-time arithmetic. For example, you could create a Joda Duration and then convert it to a Period, giving you access to numerous useful methods:
ResultSet rs = ...
Date dbDate = rs.getDate("Date"); // Get stored time in database.
long serverTime = System.currentTimeMillis(); // Get current server time.
// Compute absolute difference between two time-stamps.
Duration duration = new Duration(Math.abs(serverTime - dbDate.getTime()));
// Convert to period and make use of getHours(), getMinutes(), etc for display purposes.
Period period = duration.toPeriod();
System.err.println("Hours: " + period.getHours());
System.err.println("Minutes: " + period.getMinutes()); // etc.

The Java standard API method for date calculations is Calendar.add() (which also takes negative parameters).

I think the most common solution is to convert it to unix timestamps (or equivalent, milliseconds in Java normally), take the difference and start dividing away.
time = now - then;
time /= 1000; /* if milliseconds... */
seconds = time % 60; time /= 60;
minutes = time % 60; time /= 60;
hours = time % 60; time /= 60;
days = time % 24; time /= 24;
weeks = time % 7; time /= 7;
or months (although, then it starts to get tricky...), or whatever you want to use.
Have fun.

My advice is run your server in UTC and then use JodaTime to do any date arithmetic or conversion between timezones.
There's considerably more to date arithmetic than meets the eye once you factor in things like DSL, leap-seconds, convention changes, etc and it's really the last thing you want to be doing yourself.

The question is rather vague.
In Java, using JodaTime Date API;
3 days ago:
DateTime date = new DateTime();
DateTime threeDA = date.plusDays(-3);
int daysBetween = Days.daysBetween(dbDate, threeDA).getDays();
int monthsBetween = Months.monthsBetween(dbDate, threeDA).getMonths();
or you could use the JodaTime Period/Duration objects.
In MySQL, use a built-in MySQL Date Function e.g.:
SELECT SUBTIME(SYSDATE(),'3'); -- untested, no MySQL to hand
SELECT SUBTIME('2007-12-31 23:59:59.999999','3 0:0:0.000000');
For date differences:
SELECT DATEDIFF(columnname, SYSDATE()); -- Days since
SELECT TIMEDIFF(columnname, SYSDATE()); -- Time since
In Java, using Gregorian Calendar:
GregorianCalendar threeDA = new GregorianCalendar();
threeDA.add(GregorianCalendar.DAY_OF_YEAR, -3);

If you can use java for the conversion, have a look at the Joda library.

On the MySQL side:
CONVERT('date-time-value-here', DATETIME) - NOW()