Best practice to use timers to check current time and xml file records

[raminaa niilian]

Hi
Thank you for reading my post
I have an xml file which has some node showing time ranges.
I should check this time ranges and compare the current time with stored time ranges, if current time is within those time range, I need to perform some actions.

Are there any pattern or best practice for it?

Thanks.

[Rob Spoor]

How are the time ranges stored? As a begin date/time and end/date time?

If so, convert them to a Date object using java.text.DateFormat and/or java.textSimpleDateFormat, create a new Date object without parameters (new Date() will give a Date object for the current moment) and use their compareTo methods.

[raminaa niilian]

Thank you for the reply.
Problem that I can not resolve is, should I use a Timer to read the file in intevral and check the time range or there are other low overhead method for performing this?

[Stan James]

Timer should be fine. Set one to repeat every hour or minutes or whatever you need.

Does the file change? If not, it should be easy to read it once and schedule Timer events for time ranges that are in the future. Tools like Quartz and Cron handle complex schedules.