Java: How to schedule an event for a specific time

In a previous blog entry, I showed a snippet of code on how to determine the amount of minutes from now to a specific time.

The code was quite simple:

Date now = new Date();

GregorianCalendar expiryDate = myevent.getExpiryDate();

Date end = expiryDate.getTime();

long difference = Math.abs(end.getTime() - now.getTime());

long minutesLeft = difference / (1000 * 60);

Starting from that point, it is quite simple to schedule a Java runnable thread at a specific time. Here is how I did it:

private ScheduledExecutorService scheduler;

.....

scheduler = Executors.newSingleThreadScheduledExecutor();

.....

Date now = new Date();

GregorianCalendar expiryDate = myevent.getExpiryDate();

Date end = expiryDate.getTime();

long difference = Math.abs(end.getTime() - now.getTime());

long minutesLeft = difference / (1000 * 60);

long secondsLeft = difference / 1000;

// task to run is embedded in a class implementing Runnable

RunnableNow runnableNow = new RunnableNow()

scheduler.schedule(uhuraNow, secondsLeft, TimeUnit.SECONDS);

Hope this snippet save someone some time