The Calendar class

In this section, we're going to take a look at Java's Calendar class. When writing Java code, we generally use the Calendar class to refer to a specific moment in time.

The Calendar class is actually a relatively new addition to the Java API. Previously, we used a class called Date to perform the similar functionality. If you end up working on older Java code or are writing Java code that deals with a SQL or MySQL database, you'll probably end up using the Java Date class at least occasionally. If this happens, don't panic; consult the Java documentation and you'll discover that there are some really great functions for swapping between Calendar and Date objects.

To see the power of Java's Calendar class, let's jump into a Java program and instantiate it. Let's create a new program; first, import all the classes from the java.util package because that's where the Calendar class lives.

Next, we declare a new Calendar object; I'm going to call it now because our first goal...