Calculating days between two dates with Java

Question

I want a Java program that calculates days between two dates.

1. Type the first date (German notation; with whitespaces: \"dd mm yyyy\")
2. Type the second

Answer 1

Most / all answers caused issues for us when daylight savings time came around. Here's our working solution for all dates, without using JodaTime. It utilizes calendar objects:

public static int daysBetween(Calendar day1, Calendar day2){
    Calendar dayOne = (Calendar) day1.clone(),
            dayTwo = (Calendar) day2.clone();

    if (dayOne.get(Calendar.YEAR) == dayTwo.get(Calendar.YEAR)) {
        return Math.abs(dayOne.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR) - dayTwo.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR));
    } else {
        if (dayTwo.get(Calendar.YEAR) > dayOne.get(Calendar.YEAR)) {
            //swap them
            Calendar temp = dayOne;
            dayOne = dayTwo;
            dayTwo = temp;
        }
        int extraDays = 0;

        int dayOneOriginalYearDays = dayOne.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR);

        while (dayOne.get(Calendar.YEAR) > dayTwo.get(Calendar.YEAR)) {
            dayOne.add(Calendar.YEAR, -1);
            // getActualMaximum() important for leap years
            extraDays += dayOne.getActualMaximum(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR);
        }

        return extraDays - dayTwo.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR) + dayOneOriginalYearDays ;
    }
}