Ah yes the Java Date discussion, again. To deal with date manipulation we use Date, Calendar, GregorianCalendar, and SimpleDateFormat. For example using your January date as input:
Calendar mydate = new GregorianCalendar();
String mystring = "January 2, 2010";
Date thedate = new SimpleDateFormat("MMMM d, yyyy", Locale.ENGLISH).parse(mystring);
mydate.setTime(thedate);
//breakdown
System.out.println("mydate -> "+mydate);
System.out.println("year -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.YEAR));
System.out.println("month -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MONTH));
System.out.println("dom -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));
System.out.println("dow -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK));
System.out.println("hour -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR));
System.out.println("minute -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
System.out.println("second -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("milli -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MILLISECOND));
System.out.println("ampm -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.AM_PM));
System.out.println("hod -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));
Then you can manipulate that with something like:
Calendar now = Calendar.getInstance();
mydate.set(Calendar.YEAR,2009);
mydate.set(Calendar.MONTH,Calendar.FEBRUARY);
mydate.set(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH,25);
mydate.set(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY,now.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));
mydate.set(Calendar.MINUTE,now.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
mydate.set(Calendar.SECOND,now.get(Calendar.SECOND));
// or with one statement
//mydate.set(2009, Calendar.FEBRUARY, 25, now.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY), now.get(Calendar.MINUTE), now.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("mydate -> "+mydate);
System.out.println("year -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.YEAR));
System.out.println("month -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MONTH));
System.out.println("dom -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH));
System.out.println("dow -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.DAY_OF_WEEK));
System.out.println("hour -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR));
System.out.println("minute -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MINUTE));
System.out.println("second -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.SECOND));
System.out.println("milli -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.MILLISECOND));
System.out.println("ampm -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.AM_PM));
System.out.println("hod -> "+mydate.get(Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY));