Date Tag (Data Tag) Example

In this section, we are going to describe the Date tag. The date tag allows to format a Date in a quick and easy way. User can specify a custom format (eg. "dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm"), can generate easy readable notations (like "in 2 hours, 14 minutes"), or can just fall back on a predefined format with key 'struts.date.format' in the properties file.

If that key is not defined, it will finally fall back to the default DateFormat.MEDIUM formatting.

Note: If the requested Date object isn't found on the stack, a blank will be returned.

Configurable attributes are :-

name
nice
format

Add the following code snippet into the "struts.xml" file.
struts.xml

<action name="dateTag" class="net.roseindia.dateTag">
<result name="success">/pages/genericTags/dateTag.jsp</result>
</action>

Create an action class as shown below:
dateTag.java


package net.roseindia;

import com.opensymphony.xwork2.ActionSupport;

import java.util.*;



public class dateTag extends ActionSupport {

  private Date currentDate;

  public String execute() throws Exception{

    setCurrentDate(new Date());

    return SUCCESS;

  }

  public void setCurrentDate(Date date){

    this.currentDate = date;

  }

  public Date getCurrentDate(){

    return currentDate;

  }

}

Now create a jsp page using <s:date>tag as shown in the success.jsp page.

The <s:date name="currentDate" format="dd/MM/yyyy" /> date tag formats a Date in a quick and easy way. Here the "format" parameter specify a custom format (eg. "dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm") to follow.

The nice parameter is of Boolean type which decides whether to print out the date nicely or not. By Default it is kept false which prints out date nicely i.e. <s:date name="currentDate" nice="false" /> tag formats a date and similarly <s:date name="currentDate" nice="true" /> does not format a date, it is illustrated in our current jsp page.

dateTag.jsp


<%@ taglib prefix="s" uri="/struts-tags" %>



<html>

  <head>

    <title>Date Tag (Data Tag) Example!</title>

  </head>

  <body>

    <h1><font color="#000080">Current Date Format</font></h1>

      <table border="1" width="35%" bgcolor="ffffcc">

        <tr>

          <td width="50%"><b><font color="#000080">Date Format</font></b></td>

          <td width="50%"><b><font color="#000080">Date</font></b></td>

        </tr>

        <tr>

          <td width="50%">Day/Month/Year</td>

          <td width="50%"><s:date name="currentDate" format="dd/MM/yyyy" /></td>

        </tr>

        <tr>

          <td width="50%">Month/Day/Year</td>

          <td width="50%"><s:date name="currentDate" format="MM/dd/yyyy" /></td>

        </tr>

        <tr>

          <td width="50%">Month/Day/Year</td>

          <td width="50%"><s:date name="currentDate" format="MM/dd/yy" /></td>

        </tr>

        <tr>

          <td width="50%">Month/Day/Year Hour<B>:</B>Minute</td>

          <td width="50%"><s:date name="currentDate" format="MM/dd/yy hh:mm" /></td>

        </tr>

        <tr>

          <td width="50%">Month/Day/Year Hour<B>:</B>Minute<B>:</B>Second</td>

          <td width="50%"><s:date name="currentDate" format="MM/dd/yy hh:mm:ss" /></td>

        </tr>

        <tr>

          <td width="50%">Nice Date (Current Date & Time)</td>

          <td width="50%"><s:date name="currentDate" nice="false" /></td>

        </tr>

        <tr>

          <td width="50%">Nice Date</td>

          <td width="50%"><s:date name="currentDate" nice="true" /></td>

        </tr>

      </table>

      

  </body>

</html>

Output of the dateTag.jsp :