How to display a formatted DateTime in Spring MVC 3.0?

Question

I have a Joda-DateTime field in my model and want to display it formatted in a JSP view. I have annotated it with the new @DateTimeFormat annotation:

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Answer 1

Use the spring:eval tag which understands the @DateTimeFormat rule:

<spring:eval expression="customer.dateOfBirth" />

Alternatively, you can remove the @DateTimeFormat rule from your model all-together and use Joda's formatDate tag as Naikus illustrates.

In a future release, Spring plans to support plugging in "SpEL", which is the "Spring Expression Language" invoked by spring:eval, as the default Unified EL implementation for your JSP pages. This would allow in-line expressions like ${customer.dateOfBirth} to be routed through SpEL as well. You can vote up this enhancement request here: https://jira.spring.io/browse/SPR-7459.

Answer 2

Because its a joda datetime object, and not a Date object, you will have to write your own formatting function or a custom tag.

If you can convert it to java.util.Date somehow, then you can use the built in jstl's fmt taglibrary.

<fmt:formatDate value="${customer.dateOfBirth}" type="both" 
      pattern="MM-dd-yyyy" />

But the latest jsp quickly allows you to create custom tags.