The following code snippet shows you how to iterate through a range of dates in Java. We use the Java Date Time API. We do increment and decrement iteration using a simple for loop.

Here are the steps:

• We declare the start and end date of the loop, the dates are instance of java.time.LocalDate.
• Create a for loop.
• In the for loop we set the initialization variable the start date.
• The loop executed if the date is less than end date, using the isBefore() method, otherwise it will be terminated.
• The date will be incremented by 1 on each loop.

package org.kodejava.datetime;

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.format.TextStyle;
import java.util.Locale;

public class DateIteration {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LocalDate start = LocalDate.of(2023, 10, 1);
        LocalDate end = LocalDate.of(2023, 10, 8);

        System.out.println("Start = " + start);
        System.out.println("End   = " + end);
        System.out.println("--------------------");

        for (LocalDate date = start; date.isBefore(end); date = date.plusDays(1)) {
            System.out.printf("Date %tD is %s%n", date, date.getDayOfWeek());
        }

        System.out.println("--------------------");

        for (LocalDate date = end; date.isAfter(start); date = date.minusDays(1)) {
            System.out.printf("Date %tD is %s%n", date, date.getDayOfWeek()
                    .getDisplayName(TextStyle.SHORT, Locale.getDefault()));
        }
    }
}

Running the code snippet gives you the following output:

Start = 2023-10-01
End   = 2023-10-08
--------------------
Date 10/01/23 is SUNDAY
Date 10/02/23 is MONDAY
Date 10/03/23 is TUESDAY
Date 10/04/23 is WEDNESDAY
Date 10/05/23 is THURSDAY
Date 10/06/23 is FRIDAY
Date 10/07/23 is SATURDAY
--------------------
Date 10/08/23 is Sun
Date 10/07/23 is Sat
Date 10/06/23 is Fri
Date 10/05/23 is Thu
Date 10/04/23 is Wed
Date 10/03/23 is Tue
Date 10/02/23 is Mon

Next, we are going to use while loop.

• Define the start and end date to loop
• We increment the start date by 1 day.
• Execute the loop if the start date is before end date.

package org.kodejava.datetime;

import java.time.LocalDate;

public class WhileDateIteration {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LocalDate start = LocalDate.of(2023, 10, 1).minusDays(1);
        LocalDate end = LocalDate.of(2023, 10, 8);

        while ((start = start.plusDays(1)).isBefore(end)) {
            System.out.printf("Date %tD is %s%n", start, start.getDayOfWeek());
        }
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above is:

Date 10/01/23 is SUNDAY
Date 10/02/23 is MONDAY
Date 10/03/23 is TUESDAY
Date 10/04/23 is WEDNESDAY
Date 10/05/23 is THURSDAY
Date 10/06/23 is FRIDAY
Date 10/07/23 is SATURDAY

To use the Java stream, we can do it like the following code snippet:

package org.kodejava.datetime;

import java.time.LocalDate;
import java.time.temporal.ChronoUnit;
import java.util.stream.Stream;

public class StreamDateIteration {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LocalDate start = LocalDate.of(2023, 10, 1);
        LocalDate end = LocalDate.of(2023, 10, 8);

        Stream.iterate(start, date -> date.plusDays(1))
                .limit(ChronoUnit.DAYS.between(start, end))
                .forEach(date -> {
                    System.out.printf("Date %tD is %s%n", date, date.getDayOfWeek());
                });
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above is:

Date 10/01/23 is SUNDAY
Date 10/02/23 is MONDAY
Date 10/03/23 is TUESDAY
Date 10/04/23 is WEDNESDAY
Date 10/05/23 is THURSDAY
Date 10/06/23 is FRIDAY
Date 10/07/23 is SATURDAY

From Java 9 we can use LocalDate.datesUntil() method. It will iterate from the date to the specified end date by increment step of 1 day or the specified increment of Period.

package org.kodejava.datetime;

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

public class DatesUntilDateIteration {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        LocalDate start = LocalDate.of(2023, 10, 1);
        LocalDate end = LocalDate.of(2023, 10, 8);

        start.datesUntil(end).forEach(date -> {
            System.out.printf("Date %tD is %s%n", date, date.getDayOfWeek());
        });

        start.datesUntil(end, Period.ofDays(2)).forEach(System.out::println);
    }
}

Running the code snippet produces the following result:

Date 10/01/23 is SUNDAY
Date 10/02/23 is MONDAY
Date 10/03/23 is TUESDAY
Date 10/04/23 is WEDNESDAY
Date 10/05/23 is THURSDAY
Date 10/06/23 is FRIDAY
Date 10/07/23 is SATURDAY
2023-10-01
2023-10-03
2023-10-05
2023-10-07