How to compare two dates in Java? Examples

There are multiple ways to compare two dates in Java, it also depends on upon what exactly comparison means. If you are looking to compare two dates to find out whether they are equal or not, then you can simply use equals() method of java.util.Date class. This method will return true if both dates are equal, precisely both thave same millisecond value. If you are looking to find out whether a date comes before or after another date then you have 3 choices, you can use compareTo() method of java.util.Date class, or you can use before() and after() method of Date class, or you can use before() and after() method of Calendar class. I suggest leveraging before() and after() method of Date class, they are more readable and easy to use.

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