How to determine day of week by passing specific date?

Question

For Example I have the date: \"23/2/2010\" (23th Feb 2010). I want to pass it to a function which would return the day of week. How can I do this?

I

Answer 1

Another "fun" way is to use Doomsday algorithm. It's a way longer method but it's also faster if you don't need to create a Calendar object with a given date.

import java.text.ParseException;
import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;
import java.util.ArrayList;
import java.util.Calendar;
import java.util.HashMap;
import java.util.Map;
import java.util.Random;

/**
 *
 * @author alain.janinmanificat
 */
public class Doomsday {

    public static HashMap> anchorDaysMap = new HashMap<>();
    public static HashMap doomsdayDate = new HashMap<>();
    public static String weekdays[] = new DateFormatSymbols(Locale.FRENCH).getWeekdays();

    /**
     * @param args the command line arguments
     */
    public static void main(String[] args) throws ParseException, ParseException {

        // Map is fed manually but we can use this to calculate it : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doomsday_rule#Finding_a_century.27s_anchor_day
        anchorDaysMap.put(Integer.valueOf(0), new ArrayList() {
            {
                add(Integer.valueOf(1700));
                add(Integer.valueOf(2100));
                add(Integer.valueOf(2500));
            }
        });

        anchorDaysMap.put(Integer.valueOf(2), new ArrayList() {
            {
                add(Integer.valueOf(1600));
                add(Integer.valueOf(2000));
                add(Integer.valueOf(2400));
            }
        });

        anchorDaysMap.put(Integer.valueOf(3), new ArrayList() {
            {
                add(Integer.valueOf(1500));
                add(Integer.valueOf(1900));
                add(Integer.valueOf(2300));
            }
        });

        anchorDaysMap.put(Integer.valueOf(5), new ArrayList() {
            {
                add(Integer.valueOf(1800));
                add(Integer.valueOf(2200));
                add(Integer.valueOf(2600));
            }
        });

        //Some reference date that always land on Doomsday
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(1), Integer.valueOf(3));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(2), Integer.valueOf(14));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(3), Integer.valueOf(14));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(4), Integer.valueOf(4));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(5), Integer.valueOf(9));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(6), Integer.valueOf(6));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(7), Integer.valueOf(4));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(8), Integer.valueOf(8));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(9), Integer.valueOf(5));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(10), Integer.valueOf(10));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(11), Integer.valueOf(7));
        doomsdayDate.put(Integer.valueOf(12), Integer.valueOf(12));

        long time = System.currentTimeMillis();
        for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {

            //Get a random date
            int year = 1583 + new Random().nextInt(500);
            int month = 1 + new Random().nextInt(12);
            int day = 1 + new Random().nextInt(7);

            //Get anchor day and DoomsDay for current date
            int twoDigitsYear = (year % 100);
            int century = year - twoDigitsYear;
            int adForCentury = getADCentury(century);
            int dd = ((int) twoDigitsYear / 12) + twoDigitsYear % 12 + (int) ((twoDigitsYear % 12) / 4);

            //Get the gap between current date and a reference DoomsDay date
            int referenceDay = doomsdayDate.get(month);
            int gap = (day - referenceDay) % 7;

            int result = (gap + adForCentury + dd) % 7;

            if(result<0){
                result*=-1;
            }
            String dayDate= weekdays[(result + 1) % 8];
            //System.out.println("day:" + dayDate);
        }
        System.out.println("time (ms) : " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - time)); //time (ms) : 80

         time = System.currentTimeMillis();
        for (int i = 0; i < 100000; i++) {
            Calendar c = Calendar.getInstance();
            //I should have used random date here too, but it's already slower this way
            c.setTime(new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy").parse("12/04/1861"));
//            System.out.println(new SimpleDateFormat("EE").format(c.getTime()));
            int result2 = c.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK);
//            System.out.println("day idx :"+ result2);
        }
        System.out.println("time (ms) : " + (System.currentTimeMillis() - time)); //time (ms) : 884
    }

    public static int getADCentury(int century) {
        for (Map.Entry> entry : anchorDaysMap.entrySet()) {
            if (entry.getValue().contains(Integer.valueOf(century))) {
                return entry.getKey();
            }
        }
        return 0;
    }
}