How to round time to the nearest quarter hour in java?

Question

Given today\'s time e.g. 2:24PM, how do I get it to round to 2:30PM?

Similarly if the time was 2:17PM, how do I get it to round to 2:15PM?

Answer 1

Rounding

You will need to use modulo to truncate the quarter hour:

Date whateverDateYouWant = new Date();
Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
calendar.setTime(whateverDateYouWant);

int unroundedMinutes = calendar.get(Calendar.MINUTE);
int mod = unroundedMinutes % 15;
calendar.add(Calendar.MINUTE, mod < 8 ? -mod : (15-mod));

As pointed out by EJP, this is also OK (replacement for the last line, only valid if the calendar is lenient):

calendar.set(Calendar.MINUTE, unroundedMinutes + mod);

---

Improvements

If you want to be exact, you will also have to truncate the smaller fields:

calendar.set(Calendar.SECOND, 0);
calendar.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);

You can also use DateUtils.truncate() from Apache Commons / Lang to do this:

calendar = DateUtils.truncate(calendar, Calendar.MINUTE);

Answer 2

If you just want to round down this is a more readable version using Java Time API:

LocalDateTime time = LocalDateTime.now();
LocalDateTime lastQuarter = time.truncatedTo(ChronoUnit.HOURS)
                                .plusMinutes(15 * (time.getMinute() / 15));

output:

2016-11-04T10:58:10.228

2016-11-04T10:45:00

Answer 3

A commented implementation for Java 8. Accepts arbitrary rounding units and increments:

 public static ZonedDateTime round(ZonedDateTime input, TemporalField roundTo, int roundIncrement) {
    /* Extract the field being rounded. */
    int field = input.get(roundTo);

    /* Distance from previous floor. */
    int r = field % roundIncrement;

    /* Find floor and ceiling. Truncate values to base unit of field. */
    ZonedDateTime ceiling = 
        input.plus(roundIncrement - r, roundTo.getBaseUnit())
        .truncatedTo(roundTo.getBaseUnit());

    ZonedDateTime floor = 
        input.plus(-r, roundTo.getBaseUnit())
        .truncatedTo(roundTo.getBaseUnit());

    /*
     * Do a half-up rounding.
     * 
     * If (input - floor) < (ceiling - input) 
     * (i.e. floor is closer to input than ceiling)
     *  then return floor, otherwise return ceiling.
     */
    return Duration.between(floor, input).compareTo(Duration.between(input, ceiling)) < 0 ? floor : ceiling;
  }

Source: myself

Answer 4

You can use this simple code...

int mode = min % 15;
if (mode > 15 / 2) {
    min = 15 - mode;
} else {
    min = 0 - mode;
}
cal.add(Calendar.MINUTE, min);

Answer 5

minutes = (int) (Math.round(minutes / 15.0) * 15.0);

Answer 6

Using some code on I found on Stackoverflow, I have created the following code. It will output for every minute the quarter it will be rounded to.

import java.time.LocalDateTime;
import java.time.format.DateTimeFormatter;

DateTimeFormatter Datum_Format = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("HH:mm");

LocalDateTime time = LocalDateTime.now();
for(int i=0; i<=59; i++) {
  time = time.withMinute(i);
  int Minute = time.getMinute();
  int Quarter = 15 * (int) Math.round(Minute / 15);
  if (Quarter == 60) { 
    Time2 = time.plusHours(1);
    Time2 = Time2.withMinute(0); 
    LOG.info (Datum_Format.format(time) + "," + Datum_Format.format(Time2));
  }
  else {
    Time2 = time; 
    Time2 = Time2.withMinute(Quarter); 
    LOG.info (Datum_Format.format(time) + "," + Datum_Format.format(Time2));
  }
}

As I output the code to a console, you will have to replace the LOG.info with something like System.out.println.

Result:

2016-08-16 15:14:31 INFO 15:05,15:00
2016-08-16 15:14:31 INFO 15:06,15:00
2016-08-16 15:14:31 INFO 15:07,15:00
2016-08-16 15:14:31 INFO 15:08,15:15
2016-08-16 15:14:31 INFO 15:09,15:15
2016-08-16 15:14:31 INFO 15:10,15:15