How to get last month/year in java?

Question

How do I find out the last month and its year in Java?

e.g. If today is Oct. 10 2012, the result should be Month = 9 and Year = 2012. If today is Jan. 10 2013, the result should be Month = 12 and Year = 2012.

Answer 1

Your solution is here but instead of addition you need to use subtraction

c.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1);

Then you can call getter on the Calendar to acquire proper fields

int month = c.get(Calendar.MONTH) + 1; // beware of month indexing from zero
int year  = c.get(Calendar.YEAR);

Answer 2

java.time

Using java.time framework built into Java 8:

import java.time.LocalDate;

LocalDate now = LocalDate.now(); // 2015-11-24
LocalDate earlier = now.minusMonths(1); // 2015-10-24

earlier.getMonth(); // java.time.Month = OCTOBER
earlier.getMonth.getValue(); // 10
earlier.getYear(); // 2015

Answer 3

Use Joda Time Library. It is very easy to handle date, time, calender and locale with it and it will be integrated to java in version 8.

DateTime#minusMonths method would help you get previous month.

DateTime month = new DateTime().minusMonths (1); 

Answer 4

you can use the Calendar class to do so:

SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy.MM.dd HH:mm");
Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
cal.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1);
System.out.println(format.format(cal.getTime()));

This prints : 2012.09.10 11:01 for actual date 2012.10.10 11:01

Answer 5

The simplest & least error prone approach is... Use Calendar's roll() method. Like this:

    c.roll(Calendar.MONTH, false);

the roll method takes a boolean, which basically means roll the month up(true) or down(false)?

Answer 6

private static String getPreviousMonthDate(Date date){
    final SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");

    Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();  
    cal.setTime(date);  
    cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1);  
    cal.add(Calendar.DATE, -1);

    Date preMonthDate = cal.getTime();  
    return format.format(preMonthDate);
}


private static String getPreToPreMonthDate(Date date){
    final SimpleDateFormat format = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy");

    Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();  
    cal.setTime(date);  
    cal.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1);  
    cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,1);  
    cal.add(Calendar.DATE, -1);  

    Date preToPreMonthDate = cal.getTime();  
    return format.format(preToPreMonthDate);
}

Answer 7

You need to be aware that month is zero based so when you do the getMonth you will need to add 1. In the example below we have to add 1 to Januaray as 1 and not 0

    Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
    c.set(2011, 2, 1);
    c.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1);
    int month = c.get(Calendar.MONTH) + 1;
    assertEquals(1, month);

Answer 8

YearMonth class

You can use the java.time.YearMonth class, and its minusMonths method.

YearMonth lastMonth = YearMonth.now().minusMonths(1);

Calling toString gives you output in standard ISO 8601 format: yyyy-mm

You can access the parts, the year and the month. You may choose to use the Month enum object, or a mere int value 1-12 for the month.

int year = lastMonth.getYear() ;
int month = lastMonth.getMonthValue() ;
Month monthEnum = lastMonth.getMonth() ;

Answer 9

Here's the code snippet.I think it works.

      Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
      SimpleDateFormat simpleMonth=new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM YYYY");
      cal.add(Calendar.MONTH, -1);
      System.out.println(simpleMonth.format(prevcal.getTime()));