Duration

public abstract class Duration extends Object

Immutable representation of a time span as defined in the W3C XML Schema 1.0 specification.

A Duration object represents a period of Gregorian time, which consists of six fields (years, months, days, hours, minutes, and seconds) plus a sign (+/-) field.

The first five fields have non-negative (>=0) integers or null (which represents that the field is not set), and the seconds field has a non-negative decimal or null. A negative sign indicates a negative duration.

This class provides a number of methods that make it easy to use for the duration datatype of XML Schema 1.0 with the errata.

Order relationship

Duration objects only have partial order, where two values A and B maybe either:

1. A<B (A is shorter than B)
2. A>B (A is longer than B)
3. A==B (A and B are of the same duration)
4. A<>B (Comparison between A and B is indeterminate)

For example, 30 days cannot be meaningfully compared to one month. The compare(Duration) method implements this relationship.

See the isLongerThan(Duration) method for details about the order relationship among Duration objects.

Operations over Duration

This class provides a set of basic arithmetic operations, such as addition, subtraction and multiplication. Because durations don't have total order, an operation could fail for some combinations of operations. For example, you cannot subtract 15 days from 1 month. See the javadoc of those methods for detailed conditions where this could happen.

Also, division of a duration by a number is not provided because the Duration class can only deal with finite precision decimal numbers. For example, one cannot represent 1 sec divided by 3.

However, you could substitute a division by 3 with multiplying by numbers such as 0.3 or 0.333.

Range of allowed values

Because some operations of Duration rely on Calendar even though Duration can hold very large or very small values, some of the methods may not work correctly on such Durations. The impacted methods document their dependency on Calendar.

See Also

• XMLGregorianCalendar.add(Duration)

Public Constructor Summary

Duration()

Public Method Summary

abstract Duration	add(Duration rhs) Computes a new duration whose value is this+rhs.
abstract void	addTo(Calendar calendar) Adds this duration to a Calendar object.
void	addTo(Date date) Adds this duration to a Date object.
abstract int	compare(Duration duration) Partial order relation comparison with this Duration instance.
boolean	equals(Object duration) Checks if this duration object has the same duration as another Duration object.
int	getDays() Obtains the value of the DAYS field as an integer value, or 0 if not present.
abstract Number	getField(DatatypeConstants.Field field) Gets the value of a field.
int	getHours() Obtains the value of the HOURS field as an integer value, or 0 if not present.
int	getMinutes() Obtains the value of the MINUTES field as an integer value, or 0 if not present.
int	getMonths() Obtains the value of the MONTHS field as an integer value, or 0 if not present.
int	getSeconds() Obtains the value of the SECONDS field as an integer value, or 0 if not present.
abstract int	getSign() Returns the sign of this duration in -1,0, or 1.
long	getTimeInMillis(Calendar startInstant) Returns the length of the duration in milliseconds.
long	getTimeInMillis(Date startInstant) Returns the length of the duration in milliseconds.
QName	getXMLSchemaType() Return the name of the XML Schema date/time type that this instance maps to.
int	getYears() Get the years value of this Duration as an int or 0 if not present.
abstract int	hashCode() Returns a hash code consistent with the definition of the equals method.
boolean	isLongerThan(Duration duration) Checks if this duration object is strictly longer than another Duration object.
abstract boolean	isSet(DatatypeConstants.Field field) Checks if a field is set.
boolean	isShorterThan(Duration duration) Checks if this duration object is strictly shorter than another Duration object.
Duration	multiply(int factor) Computes a new duration whose value is factor times longer than the value of this duration.
abstract Duration	multiply(BigDecimal factor) Computes a new duration whose value is factor times longer than the value of this duration.
abstract Duration	negate() Returns a new Duration object whose value is -this.
abstract Duration	normalizeWith(Calendar startTimeInstant) Converts the years and months fields into the days field by using a specific time instant as the reference point.
Duration	subtract(Duration rhs) Computes a new duration whose value is this-rhs.
String	toString() Returns a String representation of this Duration Object.

Inherited Method Summary

From class java.lang.Object

Object	clone() Creates and returns a copy of this Object.
boolean	equals(Object obj) Compares this instance with the specified object and indicates if they are equal.
void	finalize() Invoked when the garbage collector has detected that this instance is no longer reachable.
final Class<?>	getClass() Returns the unique instance of Class that represents this object's class.
int	hashCode() Returns an integer hash code for this object.
final void	notify() Causes a thread which is waiting on this object's monitor (by means of calling one of the wait() methods) to be woken up.
final void	notifyAll() Causes all threads which are waiting on this object's monitor (by means of calling one of the wait() methods) to be woken up.
String	toString() Returns a string containing a concise, human-readable description of this object.
final void	wait(long timeout, int nanos) Causes the calling thread to wait until another thread calls the notify() or notifyAll() method of this object or until the specified timeout expires.
final void	wait(long timeout) Causes the calling thread to wait until another thread calls the notify() or notifyAll() method of this object or until the specified timeout expires.
final void	wait() Causes the calling thread to wait until another thread calls the notify() or notifyAll() method of this object.

Public Constructors

public Duration ()

Public Methods

public abstract Duration add (Duration rhs)

Computes a new duration whose value is this+rhs.

For example,

 "1 day" + "-3 days" = "-2 days"
 "1 year" + "1 day" = "1 year and 1 day"
 "-(1 hour,50 minutes)" + "-20 minutes" = "-(1 hours,70 minutes)"
 "15 hours" + "-3 days" = "-(2 days,9 hours)"
 "1 year" + "-1 day" = IllegalStateException
 

Since there's no way to meaningfully subtract 1 day from 1 month, there are cases where the operation fails in IllegalStateException.

Formally, the computation is defined as follows.

Firstly, we can assume that two Durations to be added are both positive without losing generality (i.e., (-X)+Y=Y-X, X+(-Y)=X-Y, (-X)+(-Y)=-(X+Y))

Addition of two positive Durations are simply defined as field by field addition where missing fields are treated as 0.

A field of the resulting Duration will be unset if and only if respective fields of two input Durations are unset.

Note that lhs.add(rhs) will be always successful if lhs.signum()*rhs.signum()!=-1 or both of them are normalized.

Parameters

rhs	Duration to add to this Duration

Returns

• non-null valid Duration object.

Throws

NullPointerException	If the rhs parameter is null.
IllegalStateException	If two durations cannot be meaningfully added. For example, adding negative one day to one month causes this exception.

See Also

• subtract(Duration)

public abstract void addTo (Calendar calendar)

Adds this duration to a Calendar object.

Calls Calendar.add(int, int) in the order of YEARS, MONTHS, DAYS, HOURS, MINUTES, SECONDS, and MILLISECONDS if those fields are present. Because the Calendar class uses int to hold values, there are cases where this method won't work correctly (for example if values of fields exceed the range of int.)

Also, since this duration class is a Gregorian duration, this method will not work correctly if the given Calendar object is based on some other calendar systems.

Any fractional parts of this Duration object beyond milliseconds will be simply ignored. For example, if this duration is "P1.23456S", then 1 is added to SECONDS, 234 is added to MILLISECONDS, and the rest will be unused.

Note that because Calendar.add(int, int) is using int, Duration with values beyond the range of int in its fields will cause overflow/underflow to the given Calendar. XMLGregorianCalendar.add(Duration) provides the same basic operation as this method while avoiding the overflow/underflow issues.

Parameters

calendar	A calendar object whose value will be modified.

Throws

NullPointerException	if the calendar parameter is null.

public void addTo (Date date)

Adds this duration to a Date object.

The given date is first converted into a GregorianCalendar, then the duration is added exactly like the addTo(Calendar) method.

The updated time instant is then converted back into a Date object and used to update the given Date object.

This somewhat redundant computation is necessary to unambiguously determine the duration of months and years.

Parameters

date	A date object whose value will be modified.

Throws

NullPointerException	if the date parameter is null.

public abstract int compare (Duration duration)

Partial order relation comparison with this Duration instance.

Comparison result must be in accordance with W3C XML Schema 1.0 Part 2, Section 3.2.7.6.2, Order relation on duration.

Return:

• DatatypeConstants.LESSER if this Duration is shorter than duration parameter
• DatatypeConstants.EQUAL if this Duration is equal to duration parameter
• DatatypeConstants.GREATER if this Duration is longer than duration parameter
• DatatypeConstants.INDETERMINATE if a conclusive partial order relation cannot be determined

Parameters

duration	to compare

Returns

• the relationship between this Durationand duration parameter as DatatypeConstants.LESSER, DatatypeConstants.EQUAL, DatatypeConstants.GREATER or DatatypeConstants.INDETERMINATE.

Throws

UnsupportedOperationException	If the underlying implementation cannot reasonably process the request, e.g. W3C XML Schema allows for arbitrarily large/small/precise values, the request may be beyond the implementations capability.
NullPointerException	if duration is null.

See Also

• isShorterThan(Duration)
• isLongerThan(Duration)

public boolean equals (Object duration)

Checks if this duration object has the same duration as another Duration object.

For example, "P1D" (1 day) is equal to "PT24H" (24 hours).

Duration X is equal to Y if and only if time instant t+X and t+Y are the same for all the test time instants specified in the section 3.2.6.2 of the XML Schema 1.0 specification.

Note that there are cases where two Durations are "incomparable" to each other, like one month and 30 days. For example,

 !new Duration("P1M").isShorterThan(new Duration("P30D"))
 !new Duration("P1M").isLongerThan(new Duration("P30D"))
 !new Duration("P1M").equals(new Duration("P30D"))
 

Parameters

duration	A non-null valid Duration object.

Returns

• true if this duration is the same length as duration. false if duration is not a Duration object, is null, or its length is different from this duration.

Throws

UnsupportedOperationException	If the underlying implementation cannot reasonably process the request, e.g. W3C XML Schema allows for arbitrarily large/small/precise values, the request may be beyond the implementations capability.

See Also

• compare(Duration)

public int getDays ()

Obtains the value of the DAYS field as an integer value, or 0 if not present. This method works just like getYears() except that this method works on the DAYS field.

Returns

• Days of this Duration.

public abstract Number getField (DatatypeConstants.Field field)

Gets the value of a field. Fields of a duration object may contain arbitrary large value. Therefore this method is designed to return a Number object. In case of YEARS, MONTHS, DAYS, HOURS, and MINUTES, the returned number will be a non-negative integer. In case of seconds, the returned number may be a non-negative decimal value.

Parameters

field	one of the six Field constants (YEARS,MONTHS,DAYS,HOURS, MINUTES, or SECONDS.)

Returns

• If the specified field is present, this method returns a non-null non-negative Number object that represents its value. If it is not present, return null. For YEARS, MONTHS, DAYS, HOURS, and MINUTES, this method returns a BigInteger object. For SECONDS, this method returns a BigDecimal.

Throws

NullPointerException	If the field is null.

public int getHours ()

Obtains the value of the HOURS field as an integer value, or 0 if not present. This method works just like getYears() except that this method works on the HOURS field.

Returns

• Hours of this Duration.

public int getMinutes ()

Obtains the value of the MINUTES field as an integer value, or 0 if not present. This method works just like getYears() except that this method works on the MINUTES field.

Returns

• Minutes of this Duration.

public int getMonths ()

Obtains the value of the MONTHS field as an integer value, or 0 if not present. This method works just like getYears() except that this method works on the MONTHS field.

Returns

• Months of this Duration.

public int getSeconds ()

Obtains the value of the SECONDS field as an integer value, or 0 if not present. This method works just like getYears() except that this method works on the SECONDS field.

Returns

• seconds in the integer value. The fraction of seconds will be discarded (for example, if the actual value is 2.5, this method returns 2)

public abstract int getSign ()

Returns the sign of this duration in -1,0, or 1.

Returns

• -1 if this duration is negative, 0 if the duration is zero, and 1 if the duration is positive.

public long getTimeInMillis (Calendar startInstant)

Returns the length of the duration in milliseconds.

If the seconds field carries more digits than millisecond order, those will be simply discarded (or in other words, rounded to zero.) For example, for any Calendar value x,

 new Duration("PT10.00099S").getTimeInMills(x) == 10000.
 new Duration("-PT10.00099S").getTimeInMills(x) == -10000.
 

Note that this method uses the addTo(Calendar) method, which may work incorrectly with Duration objects with very large values in its fields. See the addTo(Calendar) method for details.

Parameters

startInstant	The length of a month/year varies. The startInstant is used to disambiguate this variance. Specifically, this method returns the difference between startInstant and startInstant+duration

Returns

• milliseconds between startInstant and startInstant plus this Duration

Throws

NullPointerException	if startInstant parameter is null.

public long getTimeInMillis (Date startInstant)

Returns the length of the duration in milliseconds.

If the seconds field carries more digits than millisecond order, those will be simply discarded (or in other words, rounded to zero.) For example, for any Date value x,

 new Duration("PT10.00099S").getTimeInMills(x) == 10000.
 new Duration("-PT10.00099S").getTimeInMills(x) == -10000.
 

Note that this method uses the addTo(Date) method, which may work incorrectly with Duration objects with very large values in its fields. See the addTo(Date) method for details.

Parameters

startInstant	The length of a month/year varies. The startInstant is used to disambiguate this variance. Specifically, this method returns the difference between startInstant and startInstant+duration.

Returns

• milliseconds between startInstant and startInstant plus this Duration

Throws

NullPointerException	If the startInstant parameter is null.

See Also

• getTimeInMillis(Calendar)

public QName getXMLSchemaType ()

Return the name of the XML Schema date/time type that this instance maps to. Type is computed based on fields that are set, i.e. isSet(DatatypeConstants.Field) == true.

Required fields for XML Schema 1.0 Date/Time Datatypes. (timezone is optional for all date/time datatypes)
Datatype	year	month	day	hour	minute	second
DatatypeConstants.DURATION	X	X	X	X	X	X
DatatypeConstants.DURATION_DAYTIME			X	X	X	X
DatatypeConstants.DURATION_YEARMONTH	X	X

Returns

• one of the following constants: DatatypeConstants.DURATION, DatatypeConstants.DURATION_DAYTIME or DatatypeConstants.DURATION_YEARMONTH.

Throws

IllegalStateException	If the combination of set fields does not match one of the XML Schema date/time datatypes.

public int getYears ()

Get the years value of this Duration as an int or 0 if not present.

getYears() is a convenience method for getField(DatatypeConstants.YEARS).

As the return value is an int, an incorrect value will be returned for Durations with years that go beyond the range of an int. Use getField(DatatypeConstants.YEARS) to avoid possible loss of precision.

Returns

• If the years field is present, return its value as an int, else return 0.

public abstract int hashCode ()

Returns a hash code consistent with the definition of the equals method.

Returns

• this object's hash code.

See Also

• Object.hashCode()

public boolean isLongerThan (Duration duration)

Checks if this duration object is strictly longer than another Duration object.

Duration X is "longer" than Y if and only if X>Y as defined in the section 3.2.6.2 of the XML Schema 1.0 specification.

For example, "P1D" (one day) > "PT12H" (12 hours) and "P2Y" (two years) > "P23M" (23 months).

Parameters

duration	Duration to test this Duration against.

Returns

• true if the duration represented by this object is longer than the given duration. false otherwise.

Throws

UnsupportedOperationException	If the underlying implementation cannot reasonably process the request, e.g. W3C XML Schema allows for arbitrarily large/small/precise values, the request may be beyond the implementations capability.
NullPointerException	If duration is null.

See Also

• isShorterThan(Duration)
• compare(Duration)

public abstract boolean isSet (DatatypeConstants.Field field)

Checks if a field is set. A field of a duration object may or may not be present. This method can be used to test if a field is present.

Parameters

field	one of the six Field constants (YEARS,MONTHS,DAYS,HOURS, MINUTES, or SECONDS.)

Returns

• true if the field is present. false if not.

Throws

NullPointerException	If the field parameter is null.

public boolean isShorterThan (Duration duration)

Checks if this duration object is strictly shorter than another Duration object.

Parameters

duration	Duration to test this Duration against.

Returns

• true if duration parameter is shorter than this Duration, else false.

Throws

UnsupportedOperationException	If the underlying implementation cannot reasonably process the request, e.g. W3C XML Schema allows for arbitrarily large/small/precise values, the request may be beyond the implementations capability.
NullPointerException	if duration is null.

See Also

• isLongerThan(Duration)
• compare(Duration)

public Duration multiply (int factor)

Computes a new duration whose value is factor times longer than the value of this duration.

This method is provided for the convenience. It is functionally equivalent to the following code:

 multiply(new BigDecimal(String.valueOf(factor)))
 

Parameters

factor	Factor times longer of new Duration to create.

Returns

• New Duration that is factortimes longer than this Duration.

See Also

• multiply(BigDecimal)

public abstract Duration multiply (BigDecimal factor)

Computes a new duration whose value is factor times longer than the value of this duration.

For example,

 "P1M" (1 month) * "12" = "P12M" (12 months)
 "PT1M" (1 min) * "0.3" = "PT18S" (18 seconds)
 "P1M" (1 month) * "1.5" = IllegalStateException
 

Since the Duration class is immutable, this method doesn't change the value of this object. It simply computes a new Duration object and returns it.

The operation will be performed field by field with the precision of BigDecimal. Since all the fields except seconds are restricted to hold integers, any fraction produced by the computation will be carried down toward the next lower unit. For example, if you multiply "P1D" (1 day) with "0.5", then it will be 0.5 day, which will be carried down to "PT12H" (12 hours). When fractions of month cannot be meaningfully carried down to days, or year to months, this will cause an IllegalStateException to be thrown. For example if you multiple one month by 0.5.

To avoid IllegalStateException, use the normalizeWith(Calendar) method to remove the years and months fields.

Parameters

factor	to multiply by

Returns

• returns a non-null valid Duration object

Throws

IllegalStateException	if operation produces fraction in the months field.
NullPointerException	if the factor parameter is null.

public abstract Duration negate ()

Returns a new Duration object whose value is -this.

Since the Duration class is immutable, this method doesn't change the value of this object. It simply computes a new Duration object and returns it.

Returns

• always return a non-null valid Duration object.

public abstract Duration normalizeWith (Calendar startTimeInstant)

Converts the years and months fields into the days field by using a specific time instant as the reference point.

For example, duration of one month normalizes to 31 days given the start time instance "July 8th 2003, 17:40:32".

Formally, the computation is done as follows:

1. the given Calendar object is cloned
2. the years, months and days fields will be added to the Calendar object by using the Calendar.add(int, int) method
3. the difference between the two Calendars in computed in milliseconds and converted to days, if a remainder occurs due to Daylight Savings Time, it is discarded
4. the computed days, along with the hours, minutes and seconds fields of this duration object is used to construct a new Duration object.

Note that since the Calendar class uses int to hold the value of year and month, this method may produce an unexpected result if this duration object holds a very large value in the years or months fields.

Parameters

startTimeInstant	Calendar reference point.

Returns

• Duration of years and months of this Duration as days.

Throws

NullPointerException	If the startTimeInstant parameter is null.

public Duration subtract (Duration rhs)

Computes a new duration whose value is this-rhs.

For example:

 "1 day" - "-3 days" = "4 days"
 "1 year" - "1 day" = IllegalStateException
 "-(1 hour,50 minutes)" - "-20 minutes" = "-(1hours,30 minutes)"
 "15 hours" - "-3 days" = "3 days and 15 hours"
 "1 year" - "-1 day" = "1 year and 1 day"
 

Since there's no way to meaningfully subtract 1 day from 1 month, there are cases where the operation fails in IllegalStateException.

Formally the computation is defined as follows. First, we can assume that two Durations are both positive without losing generality. (i.e., (-X)-Y=-(X+Y), X-(-Y)=X+Y, (-X)-(-Y)=-(X-Y))

Then two durations are subtracted field by field. If the sign of any non-zero field F is different from the sign of the most significant field, 1 (if F is negative) or -1 (otherwise) will be borrowed from the next bigger unit of F.

This process is repeated until all the non-zero fields have the same sign.

If a borrow occurs in the days field (in other words, if the computation needs to borrow 1 or -1 month to compensate days), then the computation fails by throwing an IllegalStateException.

Parameters

rhs	Duration to subtract from this Duration.

Returns

• New Duration created from subtracting rhs from this Duration.

Throws

IllegalStateException	If two durations cannot be meaningfully subtracted. For example, subtracting one day from one month causes this exception.
NullPointerException	If the rhs parameter is null.

See Also

• add(Duration)

public String toString ()

Returns a String representation of this Duration Object.

The result is formatted according to the XML Schema 1.0 specification and can be always parsed back later into the equivalent Duration Object by DatatypeFactory.newDuration(String).

Formally, the following holds for any Duration Object x:

 new Duration(x.toString()).equals(x)
 

Returns

• A non-null valid String representation of this Duration.