How do I parse negative number in parentheses?

In financial application negative numbers are often represented in parentheses. In this post we will learn how we can parse or convert the negative number in parentheses to produce the represented number value. To parse text / string to a number we can use the java.text.DecimalFormat class.

Beside number in parentheses, in this example we also parse negative number that use the minus sign with the currency symbol like $. Let’s jump to the code snippet below:

package org.kodejava.text;

import java.text.DecimalFormat;

public class NegativeNumberParse {
    // Pattern for parsing negative number.
    public static final String PATTERN1 = "#,##0.00;(#,##0.00)";
    public static final String PATTERN2 = "$#,##0.00;-$#,##0.00";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        DecimalFormat df = new DecimalFormat(PATTERN1);

        String number1 = "(1000)";
        String number2 = "(1,500.99)";

        System.out.println("number1 = " + df.parse(number1));
        System.out.println("number2 = " + df.parse(number2));

        df = (DecimalFormat) DecimalFormat.getInstance();
        df.applyPattern(PATTERN2);

        String number3 = "-$1000";
        String number4 = "-$1,500.99";

        System.out.println("number3 = " + df.parse(number3));
        System.out.println("number4 = " + df.parse(number4));
    }
}

And here are the results of our code snippet above:

number1 = -1000
number2 = -1500.99
number3 = -1000
number4 = -1500.99

If you need to display or format negative numbers in parentheses you can take a look at the following example How do I display negative number in parentheses?.

Why do I get NotOLE2FileException: Invalid header signature error?

When I was creating the code snippet for the How do I replace text in Microsoft Word document using Apache POI? I got the following error when running the snippet . As additional information, the code snippet for the Kodejava website is written as a Maven project.

org.apache.poi.poifs.filesystem.NotOLE2FileException: Invalid header signature; read 0xE011BDBFEFBDBFEF, expected 0xE11AB1A1E011CFD0 – Your file appears not to be a valid OLE2 document

This error message was produce when the code trying to open a Word document. The Apache POI reports that the Word document has an invalid header signature, not a valid OLE2 document. Comparing the original document with the document under maven’s target directory I found out that the file size was different. This could mean that something alter the document and corrupt the header.

After doing some googling, I found out that this error is due to maven resource filtering. The maven resource filtering process cause the Word document header corrupt during the copy phase. The solution to this problem is to make sure that the filtering process is set to false. The pom.xml of the maven project should be altered to have the following configuration.

<build>
    <resources>
        <resource>
            <directory>src/main/resources</directory>
            <filtering>false</filtering>
        </resource>
    </resources>
</build>

How do I replace text in Microsoft Word document using Apache POI?

The code snippet below show you how you can replace string in Microsoft Word document using the Apache POI library. The class below have three method, the openDocument(), saveDocument() and replaceText().

The routine for replacing text is implemented in the replaceText() method. This method take the HWPFDocument, the String to find and the String to replace it as parameters. The openDocument() opens the Word document. When the text replacement is done the Word document will be saved by the saveDocument() method.

And here is the complete code snippet. It will replace every dolor texts into d0l0r texts in the source document, the lipsum.doc, and save the result in a new document called new-lipsum.doc.

package org.kodejava.poi;

import org.apache.poi.hwpf.HWPFDocument;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel.CharacterRun;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel.Paragraph;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel.Range;
import org.apache.poi.hwpf.usermodel.Section;
import org.apache.poi.poifs.filesystem.POIFSFileSystem;

import java.io.File;
import java.io.FileOutputStream;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.net.URL;

public class WordReplaceText {
    private static final String SOURCE_FILE = "lipsum.doc";
    private static final String OUTPUT_FILE = "new-lipsum.doc";

    public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception {
        WordReplaceText instance = new WordReplaceText();
        try (HWPFDocument doc = instance.openDocument(SOURCE_FILE)) {
            if (doc != null) {
                HWPFDocument newDoc = instance.replaceText(doc, "dolor", "d0l0r");
                instance.saveDocument(newDoc, OUTPUT_FILE);
            }
        }
    }

    private HWPFDocument replaceText(HWPFDocument doc, String findText, String replaceText) {
        Range range = doc.getRange();
        for (int numSec = 0; numSec < range.numSections(); ++numSec) {
            Section sec = range.getSection(numSec);
            for (int numPara = 0; numPara < sec.numParagraphs(); numPara++) {
                Paragraph para = sec.getParagraph(numPara);
                for (int numCharRun = 0; numCharRun < para.numCharacterRuns(); numCharRun++) {
                    CharacterRun charRun = para.getCharacterRun(numCharRun);
                    String text = charRun.text();
                    if (text.contains(findText)) {
                        charRun.replaceText(findText, replaceText);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return doc;
    }

    private HWPFDocument openDocument(String file) throws Exception {
        URL res = getClass().getClassLoader().getResource(file);
        HWPFDocument document = null;
        if (res != null) {
            document = new HWPFDocument(new POIFSFileSystem(
                    new File(res.getPath())));
        }
        return document;
    }

    private void saveDocument(HWPFDocument doc, String file) {
        try (FileOutputStream out = new FileOutputStream(file)) {
            doc.write(out);
        } catch (IOException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }
}

Maven Dependencies

<dependencies>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.poi</groupId>
        <artifactId>poi</artifactId>
        <version>5.2.5</version>
    </dependency>
    <dependency>
        <groupId>org.apache.poi</groupId>
        <artifactId>poi-scratchpad</artifactId>
        <version>5.2.5</version>
    </dependency>
</dependencies>

Maven Central Maven Central

How do I display negative number in parentheses?

The code snippet below show us how to display or format negative number in parentheses. We start by defining the number format, the pattern has two parts separated by a semicolon. In the snippet we use the #,##0.00;(#,##0.00) pattern. The pattern after the semicolon will be used to format negative number.

Next we create an instance of DecimalFormat by calling getInstance() method. We apply the format pattern for the formatter object by calling the applyPattern() method of the DecimalFormat instance. To format the number we simply call the format() method and pass the number we are going to format for display or print out.

package org.kodejava.text;

import java.text.DecimalFormat;

public class NegativeNumberFormat {
    // Pattern for formatting negative number.
    public static final String PATTERN1 = "#,##0.00;(#,##0.00)";
    public static final String PATTERN2 = "$#,##0.00;-$#,##0.00";

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        DecimalFormat df = (DecimalFormat) DecimalFormat.getInstance();
        df.applyPattern(PATTERN1);

        // Format using parentheses
        System.out.println("Positive: " + df.format(125));
        System.out.println("Negative: " + df.format(-125));

        // Format using currency symbol and minus sign
        df.applyPattern(PATTERN2);
        System.out.println("Positive: " + df.format(1000));
        System.out.println("Negative: " + df.format(-1000));
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above is:

Positive: 125.00
Negative: (125.00)
Positive: $1,000.00
Negative: -$1,000.00

If you need to parse negative numbers in parentheses to produce the represented number you can see the following example How do I parse negative number in parentheses?.

How do I convert between old Date and Calendar object with the new Java 8 Date Time?

In this example we will learn how to convert the old java.util.Date and java.util.Calendar objects to the new Date Time introduced in Java 8. The first method in the code snippet below dateToNewDate() show conversion of java.util.Date while the calendarToNewDate() show the conversion of java.util.Calendar.

The java.util.Date and java.util.Calendar provide a toInstant() method to convert the objects to the new Date Time API class of the java.time.Instant. To convert the old date into the Java 8 LocalDate, LocalTime and LocalDateTime we first can create an instance of ZonedDateTime using the atZone() method of the Instant class.

ZonedDateTime zonedDateTime = instant.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault());

From an instance of ZonedDateTime class we can call the toLocalDate(), toLocalTime() and toLocalDateTime() to get instance of LocalDate, LocalTime and LocalDateTime.

To convert back from the new Java 8 date to the old java.util.Date we can use the Date.from() static factory method and passing and instance of java.time.Instant that we can obtain by calling the following code.

Instant instant1 = dateTime.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant();
Date now1 = Date.from(instant1);

Here are the complete code snippet to convert java.util.Date to the new Java 8 Date Time.

private static void dateToNewDate() {
    Date now = new Date();
    Instant instant = now.toInstant();

    ZonedDateTime zonedDateTime = instant.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault());

    LocalDate date = zonedDateTime.toLocalDate();
    LocalTime time = zonedDateTime.toLocalTime();
    LocalDateTime dateTime = zonedDateTime.toLocalDateTime();

    Instant instant1 = dateTime.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault()).toInstant();
    Date now1 = Date.from(instant1);

    System.out.println("java.util.Date          = " + now);
    System.out.println("java.time.LocalDate     = " + date);
    System.out.println("java.time.LocalTime     = " + time);
    System.out.println("java.time.LocalDateTime = " + dateTime);
    System.out.println("java.util.Date          = " + now1);
    System.out.println();
}

The steps for converting from the java.util.Calendar to the new Java 8 date can be seen in the code snippet below. As with java.util.Date the Calendar class provide toInstant() method to convert the calendar to java.time.Instant object.

Using the LocalDateTime.ofInstant() method we can create a LocalDateTime object from the instant object. By having the LocalDateTime object we can then get an instance of LocalDate and LocalTime by calling the toLocalDate() and toLocalTime() method.

Finally, to convert back to java.util.Calendar we can use the GregorianCalendar.from() static factory method which require an instance of ZonedDateTime to be passed as a parameter. To get an instance of ZonedDateTime we can call LocalDateTime.atZone() method. You can see the complete code in the code snippet below.

private static void calendarToNewDate() {
    Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();

    LocalDateTime dateTime = LocalDateTime.ofInstant(now.toInstant(),
            ZoneId.systemDefault());

    LocalDate date = dateTime.toLocalDate();
    LocalTime time = dateTime.toLocalTime();

    ZonedDateTime zonedDateTime = dateTime.atZone(ZoneId.systemDefault());
    Calendar now1 = GregorianCalendar.from(zonedDateTime);

    System.out.println("java.util.Calendar      = " + now);
    System.out.println("java.time.LocalDateTime = " + dateTime);
    System.out.println("java.time.LocalDate     = " + date);
    System.out.println("java.time.LocalTime     = " + time);
    System.out.println("java.util.Calendar      = " + now1);
}

Below is the main Java class to run the code snippet. You must place the above methods inside this class to run the code snippet.

package org.kodejava.datetime;

import java.time.*;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.Date;
import java.util.GregorianCalendar;

public class LegacyDateCalendarToNewDateExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        dateToNewDate();
        calendarToNewDate();
    }
}

Here are the result of the code snippet above. The first group is conversion the java.util.Date to the new Date Time API. The second group is conversion from the java.util.Calendar to the new Date Time API.

java.util.Date          = Tue Nov 16 08:44:51 CST 2021
java.time.LocalDate     = 2021-11-16
java.time.LocalTime     = 08:44:51.031
java.time.LocalDateTime = 2021-11-16T08:44:51.031
java.util.Date          = Tue Nov 16 08:44:51 CST 2021

java.util.Calendar      = java.util.GregorianCalendar[time=1637023491089,areFieldsSet=true,areAllFieldsSet=true,lenient=true,zone=sun.util.calendar.ZoneInfo[id="Asia/Shanghai",offset=28800000,dstSavings=0,useDaylight=false,transitions=31,lastRule=null],firstDayOfWeek=1,minimalDaysInFirstWeek=1,ERA=1,YEAR=2021,MONTH=10,WEEK_OF_YEAR=47,WEEK_OF_MONTH=3,DAY_OF_MONTH=16,DAY_OF_YEAR=320,DAY_OF_WEEK=3,DAY_OF_WEEK_IN_MONTH=3,AM_PM=0,HOUR=8,HOUR_OF_DAY=8,MINUTE=44,SECOND=51,MILLISECOND=89,ZONE_OFFSET=28800000,DST_OFFSET=0]
java.time.LocalDateTime = 2021-11-16T08:44:51.089
java.time.LocalDate     = 2021-11-16
java.time.LocalTime     = 08:44:51.089
java.util.Calendar      = java.util.GregorianCalendar[time=1637023491089,areFieldsSet=true,areAllFieldsSet=true,lenient=true,zone=sun.util.calendar.ZoneInfo[id="Asia/Shanghai",offset=28800000,dstSavings=0,useDaylight=false,transitions=31,lastRule=null],firstDayOfWeek=2,minimalDaysInFirstWeek=4,ERA=1,YEAR=2021,MONTH=10,WEEK_OF_YEAR=46,WEEK_OF_MONTH=3,DAY_OF_MONTH=16,DAY_OF_YEAR=320,DAY_OF_WEEK=3,DAY_OF_WEEK_IN_MONTH=3,AM_PM=0,HOUR=8,HOUR_OF_DAY=8,MINUTE=44,SECOND=51,MILLISECOND=89,ZONE_OFFSET=28800000,DST_OFFSET=0]

How do I get the date of the first particular day after a specific date?

In this example we will learn how to get the date of the first particular day that fall after a specific date. In the code snippet below we will find the first Friday that fall after the new year of 2021. First let’s create a LocalDate object that represent the new year of 2021. We can use LocalDate.of() factory method to create the date object.

To get the first occurrence of a specific day-of-week from a date we create a TemporalAdjuster using the TemporalAdjusters.next() method and pass the day-of-week, in this case we pass DayOfWeek.FRIDAY.

After that we create another LocalDate that will hold the next Friday date. The get the date for the next Friday we call newYear.with() method and pass the TemporalAdjuster that we have created earlier.

Now, let’s try the code snippet below.

package org.kodejava.datetime;

import java.time.DayOfWeek;
import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.Month;
import java.time.temporal.TemporalAdjuster;
import java.time.temporal.TemporalAdjusters;

public class GetFirstDayAfterDate {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Obtains the current date.
        LocalDate newYear = LocalDate.of(2021, Month.JANUARY, 1);
        System.out.println("New Year = " + newYear);

        // Gets the next Friday.
        TemporalAdjuster nextFriday = TemporalAdjusters.next(DayOfWeek.FRIDAY);
        LocalDate nextFridayDate = newYear.with(nextFriday);
        System.out.printf("The first Friday after the new year of %s is %s%n",
                newYear, nextFridayDate);
    }
}

The code snippet will print out the following result:

New Year = 2021-01-01
The first Friday after the new year of 2021-01-01 is 2021-01-08

How do I add or subtract date in Java 8?

The new Java 8 java.time.LocalDate class provide a plus() and minus() methods to add or subtract an amount of period to or from the LocalDate object.

The period is represented using the java.time.Period class. To create an instance of Period we can use the of(), ofDays(), ofWeeks(), ofMonths() and ofYears() methods.

Let’s see an example using the plus() and minus() method of LocalDate class to add and subtract in the code snippet below:

package org.kodejava.datetime;

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.Period;

public class DateAddSubtract {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Create periods in days, weeks, months and years.
        Period p1 = Period.ofDays(7);
        Period p2 = Period.ofWeeks(2);
        Period p3 = Period.ofMonths(1);
        Period p4 = Period.ofYears(1);
        Period p5 = Period.of(1, 1, 7);

        // Obtains current date and add some period to the current date using 
        // the plus() method.
        LocalDate now = LocalDate.now();
        LocalDate date1 = now.plus(p1);
        LocalDate date2 = now.plus(p2);
        LocalDate date3 = now.plus(p3);
        LocalDate date4 = now.plus(p4);
        LocalDate date5 = now.plus(p5);

        // Print out the result of adding some period to the current date.
        System.out.printf("Add some period to the date: %s%n", now);
        System.out.printf("Plus %7s = %s%n", p1, date1);
        System.out.printf("Plus %7s = %s%n", p2, date2);
        System.out.printf("Plus %7s = %s%n", p3, date3);
        System.out.printf("Plus %7s = %s%n", p4, date4);
        System.out.printf("Plus %7s = %s%n%n", p5, date5);

        // Subtract some period from the date using the minus() method.
        System.out.printf("Subtract some period from the date: %s%n", now);
        System.out.printf("Minus %7s = %s%n", p1, now.minus(p1));
        System.out.printf("Minus %7s = %s%n", p2, now.minus(p2));
        System.out.printf("Minus %7s = %s%n", p3, now.minus(p3));
        System.out.printf("Minus %7s = %s%n", p4, now.minus(p4));
        System.out.printf("Minus %7s = %s%n%n", p5, now.minus(p5));
    }
}

And here are the result of the code snippet above:

Add some period to the date: 2021-11-16
Plus     P7D = 2021-11-23
Plus    P14D = 2021-11-30
Plus     P1M = 2021-12-16
Plus     P1Y = 2022-11-16
Plus P1Y1M7D = 2022-12-23

Subtract some period from the date: 2021-11-16
Minus     P7D = 2021-11-09
Minus    P14D = 2021-11-02
Minus     P1M = 2021-10-16
Minus     P1Y = 2020-11-16
Minus P1Y1M7D = 2020-10-09

How do I calculate difference between two dates?

In this example you’ll learn how to use the java.time.Period class (from Java 8) to calculate difference between two dates. Using Period.between() method will give us difference between two dates in years, months and days period.

Beside using the Period class, we also use the ChronoUnit enum to calculate difference between two dates. We use the ChronoUnit.YEARS, ChronoUnit.MONTHS and ChronoUnit.DAYS and call the between() method to get the difference between two dates in years, months and days.

Let’s see an example below.

package org.kodejava.datetime;

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.Month;
import java.time.Period;
import java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit;

public class DateDifference {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LocalDate birthDate = LocalDate.of(1995, Month.AUGUST, 17);
        LocalDate now = LocalDate.now();

        // Obtains a period consisting of the number of years, months and days
        // between two dates.
        Period age = Period.between(birthDate, now);
        System.out.printf("You are now %d years, %d months and %d days old.%n",
                age.getYears(), age.getMonths(), age.getDays());

        // Using ChronoUnit to calculate difference in years, months and days
        // between two dates.
        long years = ChronoUnit.YEARS.between(birthDate, now);
        long months = ChronoUnit.MONTHS.between(birthDate, now);
        long days = ChronoUnit.DAYS.between(birthDate, now);

        System.out.println("Diff in years  = " + years);
        System.out.println("Diff in months = " + months);
        System.out.println("Diff in days   = " + days);
    }
}

The result of our code snippet above are:

You are now 26 years, 2 months and 30 days old.
Diff in years  = 26
Diff in months = 314
Diff in days   = 9588

How do I install Gradle in Mac OS X?

Gradle

In this post we will learn how to install Gradle in OS X. The following steps will guide our installation process to make Gradle available in our OS X machine. But before we start let’s take a look at the definition from wikipedia about Gradle.

Gradle is an open source build automation system that builds upon the concepts of Apache Ant and Apache Maven and introduces a Groovy-based domain-specific language (DSL) instead of the XML form used by Apache Maven of declaring the project configuration.

From: Wikipedia

I. Using Homebrew

The short and simple answer is to use the Homebrew package manager for macOS. You can visit the website for detail on how to install the Homebrew. But to help you, I’ve copied the online script to install it below:

/usr/bin/ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL https://raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)"

After installing Homebrew, just type the following command to install Gradle.

brew install gradle

Now, if you want to do it manually, here are the steps 😉

II. Manual Installation Steps

1. Download Gradle

To download visit Gradle Releases Page. Download the complete distribution which includes binaries, sources and offline documentation. For example, you can download the latest release of Gradle, as of this update the version is gradle-4.0.2-all.zip.

2. Unpacking Gradle and Configure Environment Variables

  • Open Terminal.app.
  • Create a new directory sudo mkdir /usr/local/gradle.
  • Extract the downloaded Gradle distribution archive by executing sudo unzip gradle-4.0.2-all.zip -d /usr/local/gradle.
  • Edit .bash_profile in your home directory to add GRADLE_HOME variable with the following line export GRADLE_HOME=/usr/local/gradle/gradle-4.0.2
  • Also update the PATH variable to include $GRADLE_HOME/bin. If you don’t already have the PATH variable add the following line export PATH=$GRADLE_HOME/bin:$PATH
  • Run source ~/.bash_profile to executes the update version of .bash_profile. Or you can open a new Terminal.app to make this changes active.

3. Running the Installation

To test Gradle installation open the Terminal.app and execute gradle -v command. If your installation was correct you will see something like the following output:

$ gradle -v

------------------------------------------------------------
Gradle 4.0.2
------------------------------------------------------------

Build time:   2017-07-26 15:04:56 UTC
Revision:     108c593aa7b43852f39045337ee84ee1d87c87fd

Groovy:       2.4.11
Ant:          Apache Ant(TM) version 1.9.6 compiled on June 29 2015
JVM:          1.8.0_121 (Oracle Corporation 25.121-b13)
OS:           Mac OS X 10.12.6 x86_64

How do I implement equals() and hashCode() method using java.util.Objects?

This example will show you how to implement the equals() and hashCode() object using java.util.Objects class. The Objects class provides a set of utility methods to work with object such as comparing two objects for equality and calculating the hashcode. Other methods include object null check methods, object to string method, etc.

To demonstrate equals() and hash() methods we’ll create a simple POJO called Student with a couple of properties such as id, name and dateOfBirth.

package org.kodejava.util.support;

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.util.Objects;

public class Student {
    private Long id;
    private String name;
    private LocalDate dateOfBirth;

    public Student() {
    }

    public Student(Long id, String name, LocalDate dateOfBirth) {
        this.id = id;
        this.name = name;
        this.dateOfBirth = dateOfBirth;
    }

    public Long getId() {
        return id;
    }

    public void setId(Long id) {
        this.id = id;
    }

    public String getName() {
        return name;
    }

    public void setName(String name) {
        this.name = name;
    }

    public LocalDate getDateOfBirth() {
        return dateOfBirth;
    }

    public void setDateOfBirth(LocalDate dateOfBirth) {
        this.dateOfBirth = dateOfBirth;
    }

    @Override
    public boolean equals(Object o) {
        if (this == o) return true;
        if (o == null || getClass() != o.getClass()) return false;

        Student that = (Student) o;
        return Objects.equals(this.id, that.id)
                && Objects.equals(this.name, that.name)
                && Objects.equals(this.dateOfBirth, that.dateOfBirth);
    }

    @Override
    public int hashCode() {
        return Objects.hash(id, name, dateOfBirth);
    }
}

Using the Objects.equals() and Objects.hash() methods in the Student class makes the implementation of the equals() method and the hashCode() method concise, easy to read and to understand. The Objects utility class will operate in a null-safe way which means that it will check for a null fields of the object.

The code snippet below will demonstrate the use of Student class. Which will compare objects using the equals() method and print out the calculated hashcode of the object.

package org.kodejava.util;

import org.kodejava.util.support.Student;

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.Month;

public class EqualsHashCodeExample {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        Student student1 = new Student(1L, "Alice", LocalDate.of(1990, Month.APRIL, 1));
        Student student2 = new Student(1L, "Alice", LocalDate.of(1990, Month.APRIL, 1));
        Student student3 = new Student(2L, "Bob", LocalDate.of(1992, Month.DECEMBER, 21));

        System.out.println("student1.equals(student2) = " + student1.equals(student2));
        System.out.println("student1.equals(student3) = " + student1.equals(student3));
        System.out.println("student1.hashCode() = " + student1.hashCode());
        System.out.println("student2.hashCode() = " + student2.hashCode());
        System.out.println("student3.hashCode() = " + student3.hashCode());
    }
}

And here are the result of the code snippet above:

student1.equals(student2) = true
student1.equals(student3) = false
student1.hashCode() = 1967967937
student2.hashCode() = 1967967937
student3.hashCode() = 6188033

Another approach for implementing the equals() and hashCode() method is using the Apache Commons Lang library. And example of it can be seen here: How to implement the hashCode and equals method using Apache Commons?.