How to Check if a Date is Between Two Dates in Java (Date, LocalDate, Instant)

Suppose we want to check if some date is within a specified range.

Dates often employ the Half-Open rule, where the start date is inclusive and the end date is exclusive.

Let’s take a look at how we can check exclusive, inclusive, and half-open date ranges with LocalDate.

As of Java 8, LocalDate is the standard way to specify a year, month, day value. Feel free to read up on how to convert from Date to LocalDate in Java.

1. Exclusive date range: (start, end)

LocalDate::isAfter and LocalDate::isBefore check that some LocalDate is strictly later than or strictly earlier than another, respectively.

boolean isBetweenExclusive(LocalDate date, LocalDate start, LocalDate end) {
  return date.isAfter(start) && date.isBefore(end);
}

If date is equal to either start or end, this function will evaluate to false.

If we’re working with Instant, we can use Instant::isAfter and Instant::isBefore. If we’re working with Date, we can use Date::after and Date::before.

2. Inclusive date range: [start, end]

Suppose we want both sides of the date range to be inclusive. We can flip the operator on the LocalDate objects and negate each expression.

boolean isBetweenInclusive(LocalDate date, LocalDate start, LocalDate end) {
  return !date.isBefore(start) && !date.isAfter(end);
}

We’re utilizing the exclusivity of LocalDate::isAfter and LocalDate::isBefore to employ an inclusive range by negating the expression.

3. Half-Open date range: [start, end)

To perform a check over a Half-Open interval, we can use one expression from each function above.

boolean isBetweenHalfOpen(LocalDate date, LocalDate start, LocalDate end) {
  return !date.isBefore(start) && date.isBefore(end);
}

Here, we’re checking that date is between a start date, inclusive, and end date, exclusive.