how do i format the date to be the local date

Question

hello i need help formatting the date in order to for my test to read it. it needs to be formatted in Month day, year here is my code

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.concurrent.atomic.AtomicLong;

public class Appointment{

private final String appointmentId;
private Date appointmentDate;
private String description;

public Appointment( Date appointmentDate, String desc) {
    
    this.appointmentId = String.valueOf(idGenerator.getAndIncrement());
    
     Date today = new Date();
     
     appointmentDate = today;
    
    if (description == null || description.isBlank()) {

        this.description = "NULL";

        //If name is longer than 50 characters,
        } else if(description.length() > 50) {
            this.description = desc;
        } else {
            this.description = desc;
    }
}
    
public String getAppointmentId() {
    return appointmentId;
}

public Date getAppointmentDate() {
    return appointmentDate;
}

public String getDescription() {
    return description;
}   
    
public void setAppointmentId(String appointmentId) {
}

public void setAppointmentDate (Date appointmentDate) {
    
}

public void setDescription() {
    
}   

}

here is my test code so far

import static org.junit.jupiter.api.Assertions.*;
import java.util.Calendar;

import java.util.Date;

import org.junit.jupiter.api.Test;

class AppointmentTest {


   @Test
   void testAppointment() {
       Appointment appointment = new Appointment( "(this is where i need help)", "To get computer fixed");
       assertTrue(appointment.getAppointmentDate().equals("LocalDate"));
       assertTrue(appointment.getDescription().equals("To get computer fixed"));
   }

}

I dont know how to make the local date appear on new Appointment creation in my test. is there a special function i can use for local date, or do i need to input the month day and year separately. If that is the case how would i do so?

Answer 1

One reason why this is going to be difficult to test is that java.util.Date actually represents an instant in time, not a combination of month, day and year; although the designers of this class originally tried to make it represent both. If you try to make it represent a particular calendar date using java.util.Date , you end up having to do quite a lot of work.

There's a much better class you can use - java.time.LocalDate . This actually represents the combination of year, month and day; and has some neat methods in it for date arithmetic.

Also, your class has a couple of problems

1. You can pass in the date that you want an appointment to be made for (well, actually an instant in time, not a date), but your constructor overwrites it with the current instant. I don't think you wanted to do that, because it makes it impossible to actually construct an Appointment with the chosen date.

2. You're doing some checks on description - the field in the class, which really should be checks on desc .

If you fix up your Appointment class so that it uses LocalDate instead of Date , the constructor might look something like this.

public Appointment(LocalDate appointmentDate, String desc) {
    
    this.appointmentId = String.valueOf(idGenerator.getAndIncrement());
    this.appointmentDate = appointmentDate;
    
    if (desc == null || desc.isBlank()) {

        this.description = "NULL";

    } else if(desc.length() > 50) {
        this.description = desc.substring(0, 50);
    } else {
        this.description = desc;
    }
}

You should be then able to test the date handling something like this.

@Test
public void testAppointment() {
    LocalDate todaysDate = LocalDate.now();

    Appointment appointment = new Appointment( todaysDate, "To get computer fixed");
    assertEquals(todaysDate, appointment.getAppointmentDate());
    assertEquals("To get computer fixed", appointment.getDescription());
}