How do I know if a date is before another date?

This example demonstrate Date‘s class before() method to check if a date is earlier than another date.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Calendar;

public class DateCompareBefore {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Get current date
        Date today = new Date();

        // Subtract 1 day from the current date.
        Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
        calendar.add(Calendar.DATE, -1);
        Date yesterday = calendar.getTime();

        // Tests if this date is before the specified date. This method will
        // return true if the value time represented by the yesterday object
        // is earlier than today.
        if (yesterday.before(today)) {
            System.out.println(yesterday + " is before " + today);
        }
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above is:

Sun Oct 03 20:49:36 CST 2021 is before Mon Oct 04 20:49:36 CST 2021

How do I create an inner class?

An inner class is a class defined inside another class. Inner classes can, in fact, be constructed in several contexts. An inner class defined as a member of a class can be instantiated anywhere in that class. An inner class defined inside a method can only be referred to later in the same method. Inner classes can also be named or anonymous.

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class InnerClassDemo {
    private Bean bean;

    /**
     * Inner class, the compiled class will be named InnerClassDemo$Bean.class
     */
    class Bean {
        public int width;
        public int height;

        @Override
        public String toString() {
            return width + " x " + height;
        }
    }

    public InnerClassDemo() {
        Bean bean = new Bean();
        bean.width = 100;
        bean.height = 200;

        this.bean = bean;
    }

    public Bean getBean() {
        return this.bean;
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        InnerClassDemo inner = new InnerClassDemo();
        System.out.println("inner.getBean() = " + inner.getBean());
    }
}

How do I clone an object?

To enable our object to be cloned we need to override Object class clone method. We can also add a java.lang.Cloneable interface to our class, this interface is an empty interface. When we call the clone() method we need the add a try-catch block to catch the CloneNotSupportedException. This exception will be thrown if we tried to clone an object that doesn’t suppose to be cloned.

Calling the clone() method does a stateful, shallow copy down inside the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). It creates a new object and copies all the fields from the old object into the newly created object.

package org.kodejava.basic;

public class CloneDemo implements Cloneable {
    private int number;
    private transient int data;

    @Override
    protected Object clone() throws CloneNotSupportedException {
        return super.clone();
    }

    public static void main(String[] args) {
        CloneDemo clone = new CloneDemo();
        clone.number = 5;
        clone.data = 1000;

        try {
            // Create a clone of CloneDemo object. When we change the value of
            // number and data field in the cloned object it won't affect the
            // original object.
            CloneDemo objectClone = (CloneDemo) clone.clone();
            objectClone.number = 10;
            objectClone.data = 5000;

            System.out.println("cloned object = " + objectClone);
            System.out.println("origin object = " + clone);
        } catch (CloneNotSupportedException e) {
            e.printStackTrace();
        }
    }

    public String toString() {
        return "[number = " + number + "; data = " + data + "]";
    }
}

How do I convert java.util.Set into Array?

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.*;

public class SetToArray {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Create a java.util.Set object and add some integers into the Set.
        Set<Integer> numberSet = new HashSet<>();
        numberSet.add(1);
        numberSet.add(2);
        numberSet.add(3);
        numberSet.add(5);
        numberSet.add(8);

        // Converting a java.util.Set into an array can be done by creating a
        // java.util.List object from the Set and then convert it into an array
        // by calling the toArray() method on the list object.
        List<Integer> numberList = new ArrayList<>(numberSet);
        Integer[] numbers = numberList.toArray(new Integer[0]);

        // Display the content of numbers array.
        for (int i = 0; i < numbers.length; i++) {
            Integer number = numbers[i];
            System.out.print(number + (i < numbers.length - 1 ? ", " : "\n"));
        }

        // Display the content of numbers array using the for-each loop.
        for (Integer number : numbers) {
            System.out.print(number + ", ");
        }
    }
}

How do I convert Set into List?

The code below gives you an example of converting a java.util.Set into a java.util.List. It has simply done by creating a new instance of List and pass the Set as the argument of the constructor.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.*;

public class SetToList {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Create a Set and add some objects into the Set.
        Set<Object> set = new HashSet<>();
        set.add("A");
        set.add(10L);
        set.add(new Date());

        // Convert the Set to a List can be done by passing the Set instance into
        // the constructor of a List implementation class such as ArrayList.
        List<Object> list = new ArrayList<>(set);
        for (Object o : list) {
            System.out.println("Object = " + o);
        }
    }
}

The output of the code snippet are:

Object = A
Object = 10
Object = Mon Oct 04 20:20:26 CST 2021