Representing Dates in Other Epochs
Problem
You need to deal with dates in a form other than the Gregorian Calendar used in the western world.
Solution
Visit the IBM alphaWorks web site.
Discussion
As of Java 2, the only non-abstract Calendar
subclass is the GregorianCalendar, as mentioned
previously. However, others do exist. Check out the
IBM
alphaWorks web site (http://alphaworks.ibm.com), which has a large
collection of freely available Java software (mostly without source
code, alas). Search for “calendar”, and you’ll find
a set of calendars -- Hebrew, Islamic, Buddhist, Japanese, and
even an Astronomical Calendar class -- that
covers most of the rest of the world.
These work in a similar fashion to the standard
GregorianCalendar class, but have constants for
month names and other information relevant to each particular
calendar.