Here is the modern answer. It’s good for anyone who either uses Java 8 or later (which doesn’t go for most Android phones yet) or is happy with an external library.
String date1 = "20170717141000";
String date2 = "20170719175500";
DateTimeFormatter formatter = DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("yyyyMMddHHmmss");
Duration diff = Duration.between(LocalDateTime.parse(date1, formatter),
LocalDateTime.parse(date2, formatter));
if (diff.isZero()) {
System.out.println("0m");
} else {
long days = diff.toDays();
if (days != 0) {
System.out.print("" + days + "d ");
diff = diff.minusDays(days);
}
long hours = diff.toHours();
if (hours != 0) {
System.out.print("" + hours + "h ");
diff = diff.minusHours(hours);
}
long minutes = diff.toMinutes();
if (minutes != 0) {
System.out.print("" + minutes + "m ");
diff = diff.minusMinutes(minutes);
}
long seconds = diff.getSeconds();
if (seconds != 0) {
System.out.print("" + seconds + "s ");
}
System.out.println();
}
This prints
2d 3h 45m
In my own opinion the advantage is not so much that it is shorter (it’s not much), but leaving the calculations to an standard library is less errorprone and gives you clearer code. These are great advantages. The reader is not burdened with recognizing constants like 24, 60 and 1000 and verifying that they are used correctly.
I am using the modern Java date & time API (described in JSR-310 and also known under this name). To use this on Android under API level 26, get the ThreeTenABP, see this question: How to use ThreeTenABP in Android Project. To use it with other Java 6 or 7, get ThreeTen Backport. With Java 8 and later it is built-in.
With Java 9 it will be still a bit easier since the Duration
class is extended with methods to give you the days part, hours part, minutes part and seconds part separately so you don’t need the subtractions. See an example in my answer here.