How can I add days to a date?

Question

I need to find a way to add days to a date. For example, today is 10/3/03 and I want to add 180 days to that. How do I do that? Here is my code so far....
import java.util.*;
import java.text.*;
public class Loan
     String date;
     String loanEndDate;
     public void setDate()
GregorianCalendar gregNow = new GregorianCalendar();
Date now = gregNow.getTime();
DateFormat shortDate = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT);
date = shortDate.format(now);
public String getDate()
return date;
public void printLoanBegDate()
          System.out.println("Loan Beg Date: " + date);
     public String setLoanEndDate()
          loanEndDate = (getDate() + 180);
          return loanEndDate;
     public void printLoanEndDate()
          System.out.println("Loan End Date: " + loanEndDate);
The output is displayed by the following program:
public class DemoLoan
     public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
     Loan anLoan = new Loan();
     anLoan.setDate();
     anLoan.printLoanBegDate();
     anLoan.setLoanEndDate();
     anLoan.printLoanEndDate();
The output is as follows:
10/4/03
10/4/03180 - - Why does this print the 180 afterwards? How can I get that to display the date 180 days into the future??
Thanks

Answer 1

Re: storing your dates as Dates, I mean don't have a field in your class called "date" which is a String. Have a field in your class called "date" which is a Date. If one aspect of your class is a moment in time, then use the java class that best represents a moment in time: java.util.Date. Don't make things more complicated than they have to be.
Re: adding, it's in the docs:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/docs/api/java/util/Calendar.html
and
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/docs/api/java/util/GregorianCalendar.html
But anyway it's like:
Calendar c = new GregorianCalendar(); // now
c.add(Calendar.DATE, 180); // 180 days from now
Date nowPlus180 = c.getTime();
DateFormat shortDate = DateFormat.getDateInstance(DateFormat.SHORT);
System.out.println(shortDate.format(nowPlus180));