Time and Date APIs in Java 8

The standard date and time classes prior to Java SE 8 are poor. By tackling this problem head-on, Joda-Time has become the de facto standard date and time library for Java.

For example, the existing classes (such as java.util.Date and SimpleDateFormatter) aren’t thread-safe, leading to potential concurrency issues for users—not something the average developer would expect to deal with when writing date-handling code.

Some of the date and time classes also exhibit quite poor API design. For example, years in java.util.Date start at 1900, months start at 1, and days start at 0—not very intuitive.

These issues, and several others, have led to the popularity of third-party date and time libraries, such as Joda-Time. 

The new changes will appear in the Java SE8 package java.time.

A selection of key features:

• LocalDate - date without time
• LocalTime - time without date
• Instant - an instantaneous point on the time-line
• DateTime - full date and time with time-zone
• DateTimeZone - a better time-zone
• Duration and Period - amounts of time
• Interval - the time between two instants
• A comprehensive and flexible formatter-parser