Calculating the difference between two Java date instances
date, java, java.util.date, time, timedelta
Solution
The JDK `Date` API is horribly broken unfortunately. I recommend using Joda Time library.
Joda Time has a concept of time Interval:
Interval interval = new Interval(oldTime, new Instant());
EDIT: By the way, Joda has two concepts: `Interval` for representing an interval of time between two time instants (represent time between 8am and 10am), and a `Duration` that represents a length of time without the actual time boundaries (e.g. represent two hours!)
If you only care about time comparisions, most `Date` implementations (including the JDK one) implements `Comparable` interface which allows you to use the `Comparable.compareTo()`
Problem
I'm using Java's `java.util.Date` class in Scala and want to compare a `Date` object and the current time. I know I can calculate the delta by using getTime(): ``` (new java.util.Date()).getTime() - oldDate.getTime() ``` However, this just leaves me with a `long` representing milliseconds. Is there any simpler, nicer way to get a time delta?