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Meanwhile you are probably working with Java 8 LocalDate (instead of the old java.util.Date)

For Java 8 LocalDate use this method to get the earliest of a list of dates:

import java.time.LocalDate;

public static LocalDate earliestDate(LocalDate... dates) {
    return
        Arrays
        .stream(dates)
        .filter(Objects::nonNull)
        .min(LocalDate::compareTo)
        .orElse(null);
}

java.time.LocalDate

The java.util.Date & java.sql.Date classes were supplanted by the java.time classes defined in JSR 310.

For Java 8 and later, use LocalDate for a date-only value.

To get the earliest of a list of dates:

import java.time.LocalDate;

public static LocalDate earliestDate(LocalDate... dates) {
    return
        Arrays
        .stream(dates)
        .filter(Objects::nonNull)
        .min(LocalDate::compareTo)
        .orElse(null);
}

Java 8 LocalDate based version:

import java.time.LocalDate;

public static LocalDate earliestDate(LocalDate... dates) {
    return
        Arrays
        .stream(dates)
        .filter(Objects::nonNull)
        .min(LocalDate::compareTo)
        .orElse(null);
}

Meanwhile you are probably working with Java 8 LocalDate (instead of the old java.util.Date)

For Java 8 LocalDate use this method to get the earliest of a list of dates:

import java.time.LocalDate;

public static LocalDate earliestDate(LocalDate... dates) {
    return
        Arrays
        .stream(dates)
        .filter(Objects::nonNull)
        .min(LocalDate::compareTo)
        .orElse(null);
}

Java 8 LocalDate based version:

public static LocalDate earliestDate(LocalDate... dates) {
    return
        Arrays
        .stream(dates)
        .filter(Objects::nonNull)
        .min(LocalDate::compareTo)
        .orElse(null);
}

Java 8 LocalDate based version:

import java.time.LocalDate;

public static LocalDate earliestDate(LocalDate... dates) {
    return
        Arrays
        .stream(dates)
        .filter(Objects::nonNull)
        .min(LocalDate::compareTo)
        .orElse(null);
}