1. Java Date Time Tutorial
2. Java System.currentTimeMillis()
3. Java Time Measurement
4. Java's java.util.Date
5. Java's java.sql.Date
6. Java's java.sql.Timestamp
7. Java's java.util.Calendar and GregorianCalendar
8. Java's java.util.TimeZone
9. Parsing and Formatting Dates in Java
10. Java Instant
11. Java Duration
12. Java LocalDate
13. Java LocalTime
14. Java LocalDateTime
15. Java ZonedDateTime
16. Java DateTimeFormatter

• Creating a LocalDate
• Accessing the Date Information of a LocalDate
• LocalDate Calculations

The LocalDate class in the Java 8 date time API represents a local date which is a date without time zone information. A local date could be a birthdate or official holiday etc. which relates to a specific day of the year - not the precise time of that day (the moment the day starts).

The LocalDate Java class is located in the java.time package, so its fully qualified class name is java.time.LocalDate. LocalDate instances are immutable, so all calculations on a LocalDate return a new LocalDate.

Creating a LocalDate

You can create a LocalDate in several ways. The first way is to obtain a LocalDate corresponding to the local date of today. Here is an example of creating a LocalDate using the now() method:

LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.now();

Another way to create a LocalDate is to create it from year, month and day information, like this:

LocalDate localDate2 = LocalDate.of(2015, 12, 31);

The LocalDate's of() method creates a LocalDate instance representing a specific day of a specific month of a specific year, but without time zone information.

Accessing the Date Information of a LocalDate

You can access the date information of a LocalDate using these methods:

• getYear()
• getMonth()
• getDayOfMonth()
• getDayOfWeek()
• getDayOfYear()

Here is an example illustrating the use of these methods:

int   year       = localDate.getYear();
Month month      = localDate.getMonth();
int   dayOfMonth = localDate.getDayOfMonth();
int   dayOfYear  = localDate.getDayOfYear();
DayOfWeek dayOfWeek = localDate.getDayOfWeek();

Notice how the getMonth() and getDayOfWeek() methods return an enum instead of an int. From these enums you can obtain their information as int values by calling their getValue() methods.

LocalDate Calculations

You can perform a set of simple date calculations with the LocalDate class using one or more of the following methods:

• plusDays()
• plusWeeks()
• plusMonths()
• plusYears()
• minusDays()
• minusWeeks()
• minusMonths()
• minusYears()

Here are a few LocalDate calculation examples to give you an idea of how these date calculation methods work:

LocalDate localDate = LocalDate.of(2015, 12, 31);

LocalDate localDate1 = localDate.plusYears(3);
LocalDate localDate2 = localDate.minusYears(3);

The first line creates a new LocalDate. The second line creates a new LocalDate which represents the same date as the first, but 3 years later. The third line creates a new LocalDate object which represents the same date as the first, but 3 years earlier.