Get Last Friday of Month in Java

Question

I am working on a project where the requirement is to have a date calculated as being the last Friday of a given month. I think I have a solution that only uses standard Ja

Answer 1

Slightly easier to read, brute-force approach:

public int getLastFriday(int month, int year) {
    Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
    cal.set(year, month, 1, 0, 0, 0); // set to first day of the month
    cal.set(Calendar.MILLISECOND, 0);

    int friday = -1;
    while (cal.get(Calendar.MONTH) == month) { 
        if (cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK) == Calendar.FRIDAY) { // is it a friday?
            friday = cal.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH);
            cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 7); // skip 7 days
        } else {
            cal.add(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, 1); // skip 1 day
        }
    }
    return friday;
}

Answer 2

I would use a library like Jodatime. It has a very useful API and it uses normal month numbers. And best of all, it is thread safe.

I think that you can have a solution with (but possibly not the shortest, but certainly more readable):

DateTime now = new DateTime();      
DateTime dt = now.dayOfMonth().withMaximumValue().withDayOfWeek(DateTimeConstants.FRIDAY);
if (dt.getMonthOfYear() != now.getMonthOfYear()) {
  dt = dt.minusDays(7);
}       
System.out.println(dt);

Answer 3

here's how to get the last friday, or whatever week day, of the month:

Calendar thisMonth = Calendar.getInstance();
dayOfWeek = Calendar.FRIDAY; // or whatever
thisMonth.set(Calendar.WEEK_OF_MONTH, thisMonth.getActualMaximum(Calendar.WEEK_OF_MONTH);;
thisMonth.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK, dayOfWeek);
int lastDay = thisMonth.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH); // this should be it.

Answer 4

public static Calendar getNthDow(int month, int year, int dayOfWeek, int n) {
    Calendar cal = Calendar.getInstance();
    cal.set(year, month, 1);
    cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK, dayOfWeek);
    cal.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK_IN_MONTH, n);
    return (cal.get(Calendar.MONTH) == month) && (cal.get(Calendar.YEAR) == year) ? cal : null;
}