How to add and substract days in current date in Java? Example Tutorial

While working on Java projects, we often need to increment or decrement date e.g. adding one day to the current date to get tomorrow's date, subtracting one day to get yesterday's date, etc. Since date in Java is maintained as long millisecond value, Sometimes, programmers tend to add 24 hours as one day, which could be wrong if day falls on a daylight saving time zone, where a day could be either 23 or 25 hour long. When you add or subtract days from date, other components' of date e.g. month and year must roll. In this Java date tutorial, we will see two ways to increment and decrement date in Java. 

One approach uses java.util.Calendar from JDK and other uses DateUtils class from Apache commons-lang library. DateUtils class provides convenient addDays(Date, int days) method, which accepts a date and number of days to add, you can subtract days by passing negative value.

Similarly java.util.Calendar provides Calendar.add() method, which accepts a calendar field, for adding days, you need to use Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH. Similar to DateUtils, you can pass positive number to increment date, and negative integer to decrement date in Java.

Increment, Decrement Date in Java Example

Here is Java program to increment and decrement date in Java. This code shows multiple examples e.g. adding one days, subtracting one day, adding multiple days to check if month and year rolls or not. First set of examples, uses java.util.Calendar and next set uses static methods from DateUtils of Apache commons lang library. 

This program uses java.util.Date for demonstration purpose, but if you are receiving date as String, you can also convert String to date in Java, before calling these methods.

import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
import org.apache.commons.lang.time.DateUtils;

/**
 * Java program to increment, decrement date in Java. This examples shows
 * two ways to add or subtract days form date, java.util.Calendar and DateUtils
 * from Apache commons lang.
 *
 * @author Javin Paul
 */
public class IncrementDateJava {
   
    public static void main(String args[]) {
       
        //Using Calendar to increment and decrement days from date in Java
        Date today = new Date();
        System.out.println("Today is " + toddMMyy(today));
       
        Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
       
        //adding one day to current date
        cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1);
        Date tommrrow = cal.getTime();
        System.out.println("Tomorrow will be " + toddMMyy(tommrrow));
       
        //substracting two day from date in Java
        cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, -2);
        Date yesterday = cal.getTime();
        System.out.println("Yesterday was " + toddMMyy(cal.getTime()));
       
       
        //Using Apache commons DateUtils to increment and decrement date in Java
        Date increment = DateUtils.addDays(today, 1);
        System.out.println("Increment one day to date in Java using DateUtils " 
                                       + toddMMyy(increment));
       
        Date decrement = DateUtils.addDays(today, -1);
        System.out.println("Decrement one day from date in Java " + toddMMyy(decrement));
       
        //adding 27 days to current date in Java, to see if month rolls
        Date dateAfter27Days = DateUtils.addDays(today, 27);
        System.out.println("Date after 27 days " + toddMMyy(dateAfter27Days));
       
        //adding 305 days to current date to check if year rolls or not
        Date afterManyDays = DateUtils.addDays(today, 305);
        System.out.println("Date after 305 days in Java " + toddMMyy(afterManyDays));
       
    }   
       
  
    public static String toddMMyy(Date day){
        SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yy");
        String date = formatter.format(day);
        return date;
    }
  
}

Output
Today is 05-03-13
Tomorrow will be 06-03-13
Yesterday was 04-03-13
Increment one day to date in Java using DateUtils 06-03-13
Decrement one day from date in Java 04-03-13
Date after 27 days 01-04-13
Date after 305 days in Java 04-01-14

Both examples of incrementing dates are simple enough to use. Just remember that getInstance() method of Calendar class takes current locale into account and may return a calendar other than GregorianCalendar. Also you might be tempted to use roll() method from Calendar class, which seems right for job and it does in case of GregorianCalendar. Though it's worth noting that default implementation of Calendar.roll(int field, int amount) doesn't roll months and year.

That's all about how to increment and decrement date in Java. We have seen, how to add one or multiple days into current date to get a date in future. Both Calendar and DateUtils looks good for the job, and it's upto you, which one to choose. Prefer Calendar over DateUtils, if you are not using Apache commons lang in your project.

Relate Java Date and Time tutorials from Javarevisited

How to find current Date and time in local timezone in Java

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How to create Date from long milliseconds in Java

How to get month, year, and day of week from Date in Java