Other Answers are correct. I am adding this bit of clarification.
Instant
is basic building-block
The Instant
class is a basic building-block in the java.time classes. It represent a moment, a point on the timeline. Internally it is simply a count of whole seconds since the epoch reference of first moment of 1970 in UTC. So this class is deserving of little functionality.
This building-block may be used to track a moment in any of many possible calendaring systems. Making sense of an Instant
, to treat it as a date, week, month, and so on is up to the definitions of a particular calendaring system. A calendaring system can define any number of days in a week, or any number of months in a year, and so on, or may not even have such concepts as week or month.
The most obvious calendar system is the modern ISO 8601 used throughout the West and other parts of the world. The OffsetDateTime
& ZonedDateTime
classes built on top of Instant
to make up key parts of this ISO calendaring system. These classes are bundled with Instant
merely because they are expected to be commonly used by many Java programmers. But they are by no means the only calendaring system.
Look to the java.time.chrono
package for these various calendar systems:
HijrahChronology
The Hijrah calendar is a lunar calendar supporting Islamic calendars.
IsoChronology
JapaneseChronology
The Japanese Imperial calendar system.
MinguoChronology
The Minguo calendar system.
ThaiBuddhistChronology
The Thai Buddhist calendar system.
The ThreeTen-Extra project provides additional functionality to the java.time classes. This includes more calendaring systems:
AccountingChronology
A proleptic 52/53-week Accounting calendar system per IRS Publication 538 and the International Financial Reporting Standards.
BritishCutoverChronology
The British Julian-Gregorian cutover calendar system.
CopticChronology
The Coptic calendar system.
DiscordianChronology
The Discordian calendar system.
InternationalFixedChronology
The International Fixed calendar system. Also known as the Eastman Kodak calendar.
JulianChronology
The proleptic Julian calendar system, forerunner to the modern Gregorian and ISO calendars.
PaxChronology
The Pax calendar system.
Symmetry010Chronology
Symmetry454Chronology
The Symmetry454 calendar system.
There may be yet more from third-parties that I am not aware of.