Joda-Time 2.4 - New Methods, Improved Concurrency and Performance

The Joda-Time 2.4 date and time Java library has been released. It's the first Joda-Time release for 2014, and it contains enhancements, bug fixes and a time zone update. No deprecations have been introduced. Joda-Time 2.4 is released under the Apache License Version 2 and requires JDK 5+.

Here are the enhancements in Joda-Time 2.4.

• The methods Duration.multipliedBy(long multiplicand), Duration.dividedBy(long divisor), and Duration.negated() have been added to the public interface.
• In LocalDate.hashCode(), the unnecessary volatile modifier on the cached hashCode (int iHash) has been removed. The cached hashCode now follows the racy single-check idiom.
• The DateTimeParserBucket internals have been changed to use CharSequence without affecting the public API. This allows DateTimeParserBucket to be re-used on a single thread and lessen short lived object creation. CharSequence can also be used in parsing, but only by creating a mutable DateTimeParserBucket. These are low-level constructs for advanced use cases. See issue #111 for more information.
• Support for java.lang.Appendable has been added to DateTimeFormat, DateTimeFormatter, DateTimePrinter. StringBuilder is also used internally instead of StringBuffer.
• Improved the performance of chronology lookup in the classes under the joda.time.chrono package. It now uses ConcurrentHashMap instead of synchronized Maps. The cache lookup of GJChronologies was also simplified.
• Improved the performance of DateTimeFormat pattern cache lookups by using AtomicReferenceArray.
• Simplified and increased the performance the GJLocaleSymbols symbols lookup.
• DateTimeZone data has been updated to version 2014e.

Here are the bug fixes in Joda-Time 2.4.

• Fixed incorrect handling of centuries and eras in DateTimeField.getDurationField() and DateTimeField.getRangeDurationField().
• Fixed DateTimeZone.getOffsetFromLocal() to correctly handle the last cutover in DST history. This is a conversion issue from Local to UTC.
• During Period creation, if one end is within a DST overlap and one beyond the overlap, the Period was incorrect. The calculation has been fixed and the extra hour is no longer added.
• DateTimeUtils.isContiguous(ReadablePartial) method could throw a NullPointerException when evaluating weird partials.
• Fixed UnsupportedOperationException in Period.normalizedStandard(PeriodType) when PeriodType is missing either years or months.
• Added missing validation in Partial.with(DateTimeFieldType,int) to prevent invalid partials to created.
• Adding zero to a MutableDateTime no longer changes the offset during DST overlap in autumn.
• Added validation in DateTime/MutableDateTime constructors that takes milliseconds. new DateTime(Long.MAX_VALUE) is no longer valid and is rejected.
• Day-of-month and day-of-year fields now returns the correct result for isLeap().
• Insist that year > weekyear when creating Partials to allow for comparisons.
• Handle weird TimeZone implementations with null ID. Calling DateTimeZone.forTimeZone() throws a NullPointerException when passed a null ID.
• Some Android implementations throw ClassCastException when comparing different types. This fix handles broken Android implementations better.
• Better concurrency in DateTimeFormatterBuilder parsing using ConcurrentHashMap.
• DateTimeZone was incorrectly calling ThreadGroup.uncaughtException() and has been changed to throw an RuntimeException instead.