This may be the most import
ant lesson of the entire course!
All kinds of other people are creating and freely sharing useful Java code!
And now you’ll learn how to build on top of those contributions.
Don’t try to do it yourself!
You are not alone…
String
String
So far our understanding of Java objects has focused on String
s.
We’ve seen how to create them using new
:
And how to access useful String
methods, like length
, substring
, and split
.
And we’ve used these methods to solve problems:
String
s are built in to Java, meaning that we don’t need to use import
statements to access them.
But Java allows you to access lots of other kinds of objects that might be useful for solving other kinds of problems!
This lesson looks at how to access these other objects in your own code and provides some examples of useful objects and libraries.
import
and Librariesimport
and LibrariesComputer science is a remarkably collaborative field. In no other pursuit are millions of people all across the world so freely willing to share their creations!
Because of this, changing the world through your code has never been easier. Let’s see how!
First, let’s see how we find interesting and useful Java code that is part of the Java standard library.
Next, let’s see how to actually load those library classes into our project.
Complete the method below formatDate
.
It should accept a positive long
representing milliseconds since 1970 and return a String
containing the ISO-8601
representation of this time.
Here is one example for a recent timestamp: given 1602106609897
your function should return
"2020-10-07T21:36:49.897Z".
Do not overthink this. The solution we are after is a single line of code. We suggest that you explore the various built-in Java libraries for working with dates and times.
We have provided starter code so that you can tell where the import
statements should go.
Ignore the public class Question
stuff, since we haven't covered that yet.
Now let’s look at a few useful parts of the Java Standard Library. No claim that these are the most useful parts! They’re just a few examples of code that is already out there for you to use!
java.util.Random
java.util.Random
Looking to make your Java programs more interesting? Try introducing some randomess! Let’s see how.
java.util.Arrays
java.util.Arrays
Arrays are useful, but they seem to be missing a few features. Let’s explore where they are hiding out!
java.math
java.math
Computers can do math, right?
That might be useful!
Let’s get past +
, -
, *
, and /
.
One of the most important part of the Java Standard Library is the collections framework. It provides a variety of different ways of store things.
We certainly couldn’t do it justice here. But we’ll be covering several of these incredibly useful classes over the next few lessons!
Completed the method below called compareDates
that, given two non-null
String
s containing datetimes in
ISO-8601 format, returns -1
if the first time is before the second, 1 if the second is before the first, and 0
if they are equal.
When you are done, here is how your method should work:
You will want to approach this in two steps. First, convert each String
into some kind of datetime representation.
We suggest that you explore the various built-in Java libraries for working with dates and times.
Don't attempt to do this yourself!
Next, use the resulting object to compare the two datetimes.
We might suggest that you explore the java.time.Instant
class and its parse
and other methods.
We have provided some starter code so that you can identify where the import
statements should go.
Ignore the public class Question
stuff, since we haven't covered that yet.
Need more practice? Head over to the practice page.