How can I make something expire.

How can I make something expire in java. I want to make my kits that I've coded in my minigame expire monthly after the player has purchased it. Any help?

 

@VinexAx789
If you have some kind of player base, save the time until you want it to expire (milliseconds, System.currentTimeMillis() + (some time in milliseconds)). Later, check if the current time is later than the saved time: If it is, allow the use of the kit, if it's not, deny.

 

I've done this before. What I did was save a date to each player file I made. I then sometimes (for example on startup) check the dates and compare them to the current date. If it's older than 30 days then delete it.

 

Ok well, will this work if the server is offline and if the player is off the server?


@khave @megamichiel

 

@VinexAx789 if you're looping through all the files with players, then yea.

 

@VinexAx789
Why would it matter if they're offline though?
Just check when they login or interact with them, if it's past the date then remove them

 

It matters because, wouldn't the time stop if the server is offline or they are offline? Ok khave I gotcha.

@Scimiguy @khave

 

@VinexAx789 Don't use the thing Megamichel said. Use the date instead. His is viable if you plan on deleting it a few minutes or seconds later, but if you want to do it over days/months etc. you'll need to use something like dates.

 

You can convert the Long milliseconds into a date . Hi @VinexAx789

 

@khave
Why would milliseconds not be reliable? It can be used for years of time because milliseconds are unchanged. With a Date it could simply be saved into a string, with milliseconds you can save it in a long.

 

Constructor for java.util.Date is Date(Long milliseconds); You could store the Long like you said then turn it into a Date, best of both worlds

 

@Xerox262
Ik how Date works, silly .-.. I even know it's deprecated and that it's recommended to use the Calendar class instead. I was just asking @khave why saving milliseconds would be a bad thing.

 

It's not deprecated? and I wasn't saying it was bad, I said it was the best to save it as a long and convert to a date to show someone when they expire. And I was more explaining it for Vine

 

@Xerox262
Prior to JDK 1.1, the class Date had two additional functions. It allowed the interpretation of dates as year, month, day, hour, minute, and second values. It also allowed the formatting and parsing of date strings. Unfortunately, the API for these functions was not amenable to internationalization. As of JDK 1.1, the Calendar class should be used to convert between dates and time fields and the DateFormat class should be used to format and parse date strings. The corresponding methods in Date are deprecated.

I'm not against your opinion, just making some stuff clear

 

@Xerox262 Hey, and Thanks!