org.apache.lucene.document
Class DateField

java.lang.Object
  org.apache.lucene.document.DateField

Deprecated. If you build a new index, use DateTools or NumericField instead. This class is included for use with existing indices and will be removed in a future release (possibly Lucene 4.0).

public class DateField
extends Object

Provides support for converting dates to strings and vice-versa. The strings are structured so that lexicographic sorting orders by date, which makes them suitable for use as field values and search terms.

Note that this class saves dates with millisecond granularity, which is bad for TermRangeQuery and PrefixQuery, as those queries are expanded to a BooleanQuery with a potentially large number of terms when searching. Thus you might want to use DateTools instead.

Note: dates before 1970 cannot be used, and therefore cannot be indexed when using this class. See DateTools for an alternative without such a limitation.

Another approach is NumericUtils, which provides a sortable binary representation (prefix encoded) of numeric values, which date/time are. For indexing a Date or Calendar, just get the unix timestamp as long using Date.getTime() or Calendar.getTimeInMillis() and index this as a numeric value with NumericField and use NumericRangeQuery to query it.

Method Summary

static String	dateToString(Date date) Deprecated. Converts a Date to a string suitable for indexing.
static String	MAX_DATE_STRING() Deprecated.
static String	MIN_DATE_STRING() Deprecated.
static Date	stringToDate(String s) Deprecated. Converts a string-encoded date into a Date object.
static long	stringToTime(String s) Deprecated. Converts a string-encoded date into a millisecond time.
static String	timeToString(long time) Deprecated. Converts a millisecond time to a string suitable for indexing.

Methods inherited from class java.lang.Object

clone, equals, finalize, getClass, hashCode, notify, notifyAll, toString, wait, wait, wait

Method Detail

MIN_DATE_STRING

public static String MIN_DATE_STRING()

Deprecated.

MAX_DATE_STRING

public static String MAX_DATE_STRING()

Deprecated.

dateToString

public static String dateToString(Date date)

Deprecated.

Converts a Date to a string suitable for indexing.

Throws:

RuntimeException - if the date specified in the method argument is before 1970

timeToString

public static String timeToString(long time)

Deprecated.

Converts a millisecond time to a string suitable for indexing.

Throws:

RuntimeException - if the time specified in the method argument is negative, that is, before 1970

stringToTime

public static long stringToTime(String s)

Deprecated.

Converts a string-encoded date into a millisecond time.

stringToDate

public static Date stringToDate(String s)

Deprecated.

Converts a string-encoded date into a Date object.