在涉猎了所有其他答案之后，为了保持Java 7 Date类型，但使用Java 8 diff方法更精确/标准，

public static long daysBetweenDates(Date d1, Date d2) {
    Instant instant1 = d1.toInstant();
    Instant instant2 = d2.toInstant();
    long diff = ChronoUnit.DAYS.between(instant1, instant2);
    return diff;
}

你需要更清楚地定义你的问题。您可以只取两个Date对象之间的毫秒数，然后除以24小时内的毫秒数，例如……但是:

这将不考虑时区-日期总是UTC 这并没有考虑到日光节约时间(例如，有些日子可能只有23小时) 即使在UTC时间内，8月16日晚上11点到8月18日凌晨2点有多少天?只有27个小时，那意味着一天吗?还是应该是三天，因为它涵盖了三个日期?

不使用标准API，不行。你可以这样做:

class Duration {
    private final TimeUnit unit;
    private final long length;
    // ...
}

或者你可以使用Joda:

DateTime a = ..., b = ...;
Duration d = new Duration(a, b);

我喜欢基于timeunit的方法，直到我发现它只覆盖了一个时间单元在下一个更高单位中有多少个单位是固定的这种微不足道的情况。当你想知道间隔了多少个月、多少年等时，这个问题就不成立了。

这里有一种计数方法，不像其他方法那么有效，但它似乎对我有用，而且还考虑到了夏令时。

public static String getOffsetAsString( Calendar cNow, Calendar cThen) {
    Calendar cBefore;
    Calendar cAfter;
    if ( cNow.getTimeInMillis() < cThen.getTimeInMillis()) {
        cBefore = ( Calendar) cNow.clone();
        cAfter = cThen;
    } else {
        cBefore = ( Calendar) cThen.clone();
        cAfter = cNow;
    }
    // compute diff
    Map<Integer, Long> diffMap = new HashMap<Integer, Long>();
    int[] calFields = { Calendar.YEAR, Calendar.MONTH, Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH, Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY, Calendar.MINUTE, Calendar.SECOND, Calendar.MILLISECOND};
    for ( int i = 0; i < calFields.length; i++) {
        int field = calFields[ i];
        long    d = computeDist( cAfter, cBefore, field);
        diffMap.put( field, d);
    }
    final String result = String.format( "%dY %02dM %dT %02d:%02d:%02d.%03d",
            diffMap.get( Calendar.YEAR), diffMap.get( Calendar.MONTH), diffMap.get( Calendar.DAY_OF_MONTH), diffMap.get( Calendar.HOUR_OF_DAY), diffMap.get( Calendar.MINUTE), diffMap.get( Calendar.SECOND), diffMap.get( Calendar.MILLISECOND));
    return result;
}

private static int computeDist( Calendar cAfter, Calendar cBefore, int field) {
    cBefore.setLenient( true);
    System.out.print( "D " + new Date( cBefore.getTimeInMillis()) + " --- " + new Date( cAfter.getTimeInMillis()) + ": ");
    int count = 0;
    if ( cAfter.getTimeInMillis() > cBefore.getTimeInMillis()) {
        int fVal = cBefore.get( field);
        while ( cAfter.getTimeInMillis() >= cBefore.getTimeInMillis()) {
            count++;
            fVal = cBefore.get( field);
            cBefore.set( field, fVal + 1);
            System.out.print( count + "/"  + ( fVal + 1) + ": " + new Date( cBefore.getTimeInMillis()) + " ] ");
        }
        int result = count - 1;
        cBefore.set( field, fVal);
        System.out.println( "" + result + " at: " + field + " cb = " + new Date( cBefore.getTimeInMillis()));
        return result;
    }
    return 0;
}

public static String getDifferenceBtwTime(Date dateTime) {

    long timeDifferenceMilliseconds = new Date().getTime() - dateTime.getTime();
    long diffSeconds = timeDifferenceMilliseconds / 1000;
    long diffMinutes = timeDifferenceMilliseconds / (60 * 1000);
    long diffHours = timeDifferenceMilliseconds / (60 * 60 * 1000);
    long diffDays = timeDifferenceMilliseconds / (60 * 60 * 1000 * 24);
    long diffWeeks = timeDifferenceMilliseconds / (60 * 60 * 1000 * 24 * 7);
    long diffMonths = (long) (timeDifferenceMilliseconds / (60 * 60 * 1000 * 24 * 30.41666666));
    long diffYears = (long)(timeDifferenceMilliseconds / (1000 * 60 * 60 * 24 * 365));

    if (diffSeconds < 1) {
        return "one sec ago";
    } else if (diffMinutes < 1) {
        return diffSeconds + " seconds ago";
    } else if (diffHours < 1) {
        return diffMinutes + " minutes ago";
    } else if (diffDays < 1) {
        return diffHours + " hours ago";
    } else if (diffWeeks < 1) {
        return diffDays + " days ago";
    } else if (diffMonths < 1) {
        return diffWeeks + " weeks ago";
    } else if (diffYears < 12) {
        return diffMonths + " months ago";
    } else {
        return diffYears + " years ago";
    }
}   

使用java。Java 8+内置的时间框架:

ZonedDateTime now = ZonedDateTime.now();
ZonedDateTime oldDate = now.minusDays(1).minusMinutes(10);
Duration duration = Duration.between(oldDate, now);
System.out.println("ISO-8601: " + duration);
System.out.println("Minutes: " + duration.toMinutes());

输出:

ISO-8601: PT24H10M 分钟:罢工,

有关更多信息，请参阅Oracle教程和ISO 8601标准。