Formatting date with fmt:formatDate Action

Date and time are important matters in internationalized web applications. Different country has it own way to present date and time in different format. JSP has an action called to allow you to format date and time based on a specificlocale. Here is a table of action attributes. As you can see only value attribute isrequired for action.

Date and time are important matters in internationalized web applications. Different country has it own way to present date and time in different format.  JSP has an action called  to allow you to format date and time based on a specificlocale. Here is a table of action attributes. As you can see only value attribute is required for action.

Attributes
Name	Mandatory	Meaning
value	yes	Date and/or time value to be formatted.
type	no	Accept date or/and time to be used to format
dateStyle	no	Specify predefined formatted style for date only if date value is used for formatting.
timeStyle	no	Specify predefined formatted style for time only if time value is used for formatting.
pattern	no	Specify standard customized pattern for formating date and/or time
timeZone	no	If the time value is used to format, this attribute specify time zone for that time value.
var	no	This attribute is for exporting scoped  variable which stores the formatted date and/or time as a string
scope	no	specify the scope of var.

Let's take a look at an example of using  action to format date in different locale.

First we use the useBean tag to initialize a scoped variable called now and store current date value into this variable. Then we set the locale to different locales: US and FR and print out the current date in now variable by using  action.

Formatting Date and/or Time

By default format and print only date. If you want to print time or bothdate and time you can use the type attribute. The type attribute accepts date, time and both to allow you to print such a this information in a specific locale. Let's take a look at an example:

Formatting Date Time with predefined styles and custom patterns

You cannot only format and print date & time with predefined styles provided by JSTL but also with a custom pattern. The timeStyle and dateStyle attributes of specify the predefined styles you want to format. Patterns attribute enables you to define your own style. In this case, you need the date & time code table bellow to find exactly what you want to format.

Code	Meaning
G	The era (A.D., B.C., and so on)
y	The year (yy for two-digit years, yyyy for four digits)
M	The month (MM for numeric month, MMM or longer for month names orabbreviations)
w	The week of the year (ww for two digits)
W	The week of the month
D	The day of the year (DDD for three digits)
d	The day of the month (dd for two digits)
F	The numeric day of the week
E	The text day of the week (EEEE or longer for full name)
a	AMa.m./PMp.m. indicator
H	Hour of the day (0–23)
k	Hour of the day (1–24)
K	Hour in a.m./p.m. (0–11)
h	Hour in a.m./p.m. (1–12)
m	Minutes in hour
s	Seconds in minute
S	Milliseconds in second
z	Full time zone name
Z	RFC 822 time zone (for example, 0500)

Here is an example of using predefined styles and custom pattern to format and print date & time.