Adding n hours to a date in Java?

Solution 1:

Check Calendar class. It has add method (and some others) to allow time manipulation.

Something like this should work:

Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance(); // creates calendar
cal.setTime(new Date());               // sets calendar time/date
cal.add(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, 1);      // adds one hour
cal.getTime();                         // returns new date object plus one hour

Check API for more.

Solution 2:

If you use Apache Commons / Lang, you can do it in one step using DateUtils.addHours():

Date newDate = DateUtils.addHours(oldDate, 3);

(The original object is unchanged)

Solution 3:

To simplify @Christopher's example.

Say you have a constant

public static final long HOUR = 3600*1000; // in milli-seconds.

You can write.

Date newDate = new Date(oldDate.getTime() + 2 * HOUR);

If you use long to store date/time instead of the Date object you can do

long newDate = oldDate + 2 * HOUR;