New Features of Java 8 - Java 8 Recipes - page 54

Solution
Utilize a DateTimeFormatter to set the format of the specified string of text and
then call on the LocalDate.parse() method, passing the string of text as the first
argument and the formatter as the second. The following lines of code demonstrate this
process.
DateTimeFormatter formatter
= DateTimeFormatter.ofPattern("MM/dd/yyyy");
LocalDate yearStart = LocalDate.parse("01/01/2014",
formatter);
How It Works
The LocalDate object contains several utility methods that can be used to manipu-
late a date. One such method is parse() , which accepts two arguments, a string-
based date and a DateTimeFormatter object that specifies the format of the first
argument. This method obtains an instance of LocalDate from the text string, and it
returns a DateTimeParseException if the text cannot be parsed due to incorrect
formatting.
The ability to obtain a date from a specified string is only one of the nice features
of the new Date-Time API. To learn about more new features, refer to Chapter 4 .
2-7. Performing Date-Time Calculations
Problem
You want to add a number of days or subtract a number of weeks from a given date or
time.
Solution
Utilize the built-in utility methods in the LocalDate and LocalTime objects to
perform the required calculation. The following code obtains the current date and time
and performs some basic calculations on them.