If you are not running on Java 8, then there are two ways to calculate the difference between two dates in Java in days, either by using standard JDK classes e.g. java.util.Date and java.util.Calendar or by using the joda-time library. Unfortunately, Java's old Date and Calendar API is buggy and not intuitive, so many of us by default use Joda for all date and time arithmetic. In this example, you will learn how to find the number of days between today and any date entered by a user using Joda, as well as without using any third-party library. When I first time face this problem, I thought what's a big deal about finding the difference between dates? If you can convert Date to milliseconds then finding a number of days, months or years are just a matter of simple arithmetic, but I was WRONG. I was not thinking about the real-world date and time nuisance like leap seconds, leap years, and daylight saving time.
