Recipe 24.8 Formatting Dates in a JSP

Problem

You want to display a date in a JSP that is customized for the user 's locale.

Solution

Use the fmt:formatDate JSTL tag.

Discussion

The JSTL includes the "formatting" library, which allows JSP code to display dates in a locale-sensitive manner. Example 24-9 uses the fmt:formatDate tag. The code uses the standard action jsp:useBean to create a java.util.Date object representing the current date and time. The code passes the date object to fmt:formatDate's value attribute. When a user requests the JSP, the fmt:formatDate tag is replaced by text displaying the formatted date.

Example 24-9. Formatting a date using fmt:formatDate

  <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/core" prefix="c" %> <%@ taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/fmt" prefix="fmt" %> <jsp:useBean id="date" class="java.util.Date" />  <html> <head><title> <fmt:message key="Welcome" /> </title></head> <body> <h2> <fmt:message key="Hello" /> <fmt:message key="and" />    <fmt:message key="Welcome" /> </h2>  <fmt:formatDate value="${date}" type="both" dateStyle=   "full" timeStyle="short" /> <br />  Locale: <c:out value=   "${pageContext.request.locale.language}" />_<c:out value=    "${pageContext.request.locale.country}" />  </body> </html>

The fmt:message tags here depend on a configuration parameter, or context-param element, in the deployment descriptor. The context-param element specifies the i18n- related resources . See Recipe 24.13.

The element has attributes named dateStyle and timeStyle that allow the code to customize the format of the date and time Strings .

See the Javadoc for the DateFormat class for more details: http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.1/docs/api/java/text/DateFormat.html.

The output of the JSP in Example 24-9 looks just like Figure 24-5 in the prior recipe.

Problem

Solution

Discussion

Example 24-9. Formatting a date using fmt:formatDate

See Also