How to check if a date is after today java

Question

Im trying to check whether a date entered by the user is after todays date. Here is my code:

SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd");
Date enteredDate = sdf.parse(date);
Date currentDate = new Date();
if(enteredDate.after(currentDate)){

Date is a variable with the user date in the format "2016/04/26". After doing some debugging i found that enteredDate and currentDate are null. Any ideas why this is? Thanks

Answer 1

As mentioned in comments, it's not possible that Date object will have null reference. However if sdf.parse(date) throws an exception which is suppressed then enteredDate could be null.

 String date="2016/04/26";
    Date enteredDate=null;
    try
    {
    SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy/MM/dd");
    enteredDate = sdf.parse(date);
    }catch (Exception ex)
    {
        // enteredDate will be null if date="287686";
    }
    Date currentDate = new Date();      
    if(enteredDate.after(currentDate)){
        System.out.println("after ");
    }else
        System.out.println("before");