Groovy String to Date

Question

I am coding this with Groovy

I am currently trying to convert a string that I have to a date without having to do anything too tedious.

String theD         


        

Answer 1

Googling around for Groovy ways to "cast" a String to a Date, I came across this article: http://www.goodercode.com/wp/intercept-method-calls-groovy-type-conversion/

The author uses Groovy metaMethods to allow dynamically extending the behavior of any class' asType method. Here is the code from the website.

class Convert {
    private from
    private to

    private Convert(clazz) { from = clazz }
    static def from(clazz) {
        new Convert(clazz)
    }

    def to(clazz) {
        to = clazz
        return this
    }

    def using(closure) {
        def originalAsType = from.metaClass.getMetaMethod('asType', [] as Class[])
        from.metaClass.asType = { Class clazz ->
            if( clazz == to ) {
                closure.setProperty('value', delegate)
                closure(delegate)
            } else {
                originalAsType.doMethodInvoke(delegate, clazz)
            }
        }
    }
}

They provide a Convert class that wraps the Groovy complexity, making it trivial to add custom as-based type conversion from any type to any other:

Convert.from( String ).to( Date ).using { new java.text.SimpleDateFormat('MM-dd-yyyy').parse(value) }

def christmas = '12-25-2010' as Date

It's a convenient and powerful solution, but I wouldn't recommend it to someone who isn't familiar with the tradeoffs and pitfalls of tinkering with metaClasses.