javatimedurationtimeofday

Time difference in AM/PM in Java


I am trying to calculate the time difference in java by input time format in 12 hours it works well when i input start time 11:58:10 pm and end time 12:02:15 am. But as i enter 12:00:00 am and 12:00:00 pm it give difference 0 minutes. don't know why. Below is my code please let me know where i am wrong.

Scanner input = new Scanner(System.in);
System.out.print("Enter start time (HH:mm:ss aa): ");
String starttime = input.nextLine();

System.out.print("Enter end time (HH:mm:ss aa): ");
String endtime = input.nextLine();

//HH converts hour in 24 hours format (0-23), day calculation
SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("HH:mm:ss aa");

Date d1 = null;
Date d2 = null;

try {
    d1 = format.parse(starttime);
    d2 = format.parse(endtime);

    //in milliseconds
    long diff = d2.getTime() - d1.getTime();

    long diffSeconds = diff / 1000 % 60;
    long diffMinutes = diff / (60 * 1000) % 60;

    System.out.print(diffMinutes + " minutes and "+diffSeconds + " seconds.");
} catch (Exception e) {
    System.out.println("Invalid fromat");
}

Solution

  • The new java.time methods LocalTime, DateTimeFormatter and Duration provide much better methods for handling this. For example:

    DateTimeFormatter format = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("h:m:s a");
    
    LocalTime time1 = LocalTime.parse("12:00:00 am", format);
    LocalTime time2 = LocalTime.parse("2:00:20 pm", format);
    
    Duration dur = Duration.between(time1, time2);
    
    System.out.println(dur.toMinutes() + " minutes " + dur.toSecondsPart() + " seconds");
    

    Note: Duration.toSecondsPart requires Java 9 or later, the rest of this code requires Java 8 or later.