Checking Out Java's Duration

To work with Java's Duration class, you need to import the java.time.Duration package. You can do so by adding the following import statement at the beginning of your Java file:

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1import java.time.Duration;

Creating a Duration

To create a Duration object, you can utilize one of the several available factory methods. The most common way is by specifying the amount of time in seconds, such as:

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1Duration duration = Duration.ofSeconds(60);

This creates a Duration object representing 60 seconds. You can also use other time units like minutes, hours, or days by utilizing the appropriate factory methods, such as ofMinutes, ofHours, or ofDays.

Another way to create a Duration object is by specifying the amount of time using a combination of different time units. For example, if you want to represent 2 hours, 30 minutes, and 45 seconds, you can use the of method as follows:

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1Duration duration = Duration.ofHours(2).plusMinutes(30).plusSeconds(45);

Working with Durations

Once you have a Duration object, you can perform various operations and calculations with it. Some of the commonly used methods include:

• toDays(), toHours(), toMinutes(), toSeconds(): These methods allow you to retrieve the equivalent time units of the duration.

• plus(Duration), minus(Duration): These methods enable you to add or subtract another duration from the current one.

• multipliedBy(long), dividedBy(long): These methods let you multiply or divide the duration by a scalar value.

• compareTo(Duration): This method compares the current duration with another duration and returns an integer indicating their relative order.

Here's an example that demonstrates some of these operations:

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1Duration duration1 = Duration.ofMinutes(90);
2Duration duration2 = Duration.ofHours(2);
3
4long totalMinutes = duration1.plus(duration2).toMinutes();
5long totalSeconds = duration2.minus(duration1).toSeconds();
6
7System.out.println("Total minutes: " + totalMinutes); // Output: Total minutes: 210
8System.out.println("Total seconds: " + totalSeconds); // Output: Total seconds: 1800

In this example, we add duration2 to duration1 and retrieve the total minutes. We also subtract duration1 from duration2 and get the total seconds.

Parsing Durations

Java's Duration class also provides a convenient way to parse durations from textual representations. You can use the parse method to parse a duration string in the ISO-8601 format, which consists of a number followed by a time unit symbol.

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1Duration duration = Duration.parse("PT3H30M");

This creates a Duration object representing 3 hours and 30 minutes. The "PT" prefix denotes a duration in the ISO-8601 format, followed by the hours "3H" and the minutes "30M".

Converting Durations

If you need to convert a Duration object to a different time representation, such as LocalTime or Instant, you can achieve that by utilizing the to method.

For instance, to convert a duration to seconds as a long value, you can do:

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1long totalSeconds = duration.toSeconds();

Summary

Java's Duration class provides a comprehensive set of functionalities for working with durations and performing time-based calculations. By importing the java.time.Duration package and utilizing the Duration class, you can handle durations effectively in your Java applications.