How do I calculate someone's age in Java?

Question

I want to return an age in years as an int in a Java method. What I have now is the following where getBirthDate() returns a Date object (with the birth date ;-)):

Answer 1

/**
 * This Method is unit tested properly for very different cases , 
 * taking care of Leap Year days difference in a year, 
 * and date cases month and Year boundary cases (12/31/1980, 01/01/1980 etc)
**/

public static int getAge(Date dateOfBirth) {

    Calendar today = Calendar.getInstance();
    Calendar birthDate = Calendar.getInstance();

    int age = 0;

    birthDate.setTime(dateOfBirth);
    if (birthDate.after(today)) {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Can't be born in the future");
    }

    age = today.get(Calendar.YEAR) - birthDate.get(Calendar.YEAR);

    // If birth date is greater than todays date (after 2 days adjustment of leap year) then decrement age one year   
    if ( (birthDate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR) - today.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR) > 3) ||
            (birthDate.get(Calendar.MONTH) > today.get(Calendar.MONTH ))){
        age--;

     // If birth date and todays date are of same month and birth day of month is greater than todays day of month then decrement age
    }else if ((birthDate.get(Calendar.MONTH) == today.get(Calendar.MONTH )) &&
              (birthDate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH) > today.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH ))){
        age--;
    }

    return age;
}

Answer 2

With Java 8, we can calculate a person age with one line of code:

public int calCAge(int year, int month,int days){             
    return LocalDate.now().minus(Period.of(year, month, days)).getYear();         
}

Answer 3

The fields birth and effect are both date fields:

Calendar bir = Calendar.getInstance();
bir.setTime(birth);
int birthNm = bir.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR);
int birthYear = bir.get(Calendar.YEAR);
Calendar eff = Calendar.getInstance();
eff.setTime(effect);

This basically a modification of John O's solution without using depreciated methods. I spent a fair amount of time trying to get his code to work in in my code. Maybe this will save others that time.

Answer 4

public int getAge(Date dateOfBirth) 
{
    Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();
    Calendar dob = Calendar.getInstance();

    dob.setTime(dateOfBirth);

    if (dob.after(now)) 
    {
        throw new IllegalArgumentException("Can't be born in the future");
    }

    int age = now.get(Calendar.YEAR) - dob.get(Calendar.YEAR);

    if (now.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR) < dob.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_YEAR)) 
    {
        age--;
    }

    return age;
}

Answer 5

public int getAge(Date birthDate) {
    Calendar a = Calendar.getInstance(Locale.US);
    a.setTime(date);
    Calendar b = Calendar.getInstance(Locale.US);
    int age = b.get(YEAR) - a.get(YEAR);
    if (a.get(MONTH) > b.get(MONTH) || (a.get(MONTH) == b.get(MONTH) && a.get(DATE) > b.get(DATE))) {
        age--;
    }
    return age;
}

Answer 6

It's perhaps surprising to note that you don't need to know how many days or months there are in a year or how many days are in those months, likewise, you don't need to know about leap years, leap seconds, or any of that stuff using this simple, 100% accurate method:

public static int age(Date birthday, Date date) {
    DateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyyMMdd");
    int d1 = Integer.parseInt(formatter.format(birthday));
    int d2 = Integer.parseInt(formatter.format(date));
    int age = (d2-d1)/10000;
    return age;
}