How do I know if a date is before another date?

This example demonstrate Date‘s class before() method to check if a date is earlier than another date.

package org.kodejava.util;

import java.util.Date;
import java.util.Calendar;

public class DateCompareBefore {
    public static void main(String[] args) {
        // Get current date
        Date today = new Date();

        // Subtract 1 day from the current date.
        Calendar calendar = Calendar.getInstance();
        calendar.add(Calendar.DATE, -1);
        Date yesterday = calendar.getTime();

        // Tests if this date is before the specified date. This method will
        // return true if the value time represented by the yesterday object
        // is earlier than today.
        if (yesterday.before(today)) {
            System.out.println(yesterday + " is before " + today);
        }
    }
}

The result of the code snippet above is:

Sun Oct 03 20:49:36 CST 2021 is before Mon Oct 04 20:49:36 CST 2021