Is it possible to create a date value in Expression Language?

Question

Is it possible to create a date value in JSTL Expression Language (EL) without using scriptlets? Here is a snippet of some of the legacy code I'm trying to refactor to only use EL.

<td><%=new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm z").format(new java.util.Date())%></td>

Apparently it prints out the current date and time. I know I can format a date using EL, but can I get a date using EL?

@BalusC great reference, thanks for the link – bakoyaro Dec 28 '10 at 14:52 — bakoyaro, Dec 28 '10 at 14:52

score 23 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 22 '10 at 19:06

23

I don't think you can do this in EL. But how about this, no scriptlets here

<jsp:useBean id="today" class="java.util.Date" scope="page" />
<fmt:formatDate value="${today}" pattern="MM.dd.yyyy" />

answered Dec 22 '10 at 19:06

Aravind Yarram

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ah, this may be it. I'll test it out and let you know how it goes – bakoyaro Dec 22 '10 at 19:12
please can you help me how to apply `${today}` with pattern i want to do this but without `substring` ` ` – shareef Jul 04 '13 at 10:55
Is "Today" the date on the server side or the client side in this case? I would think Server – njfife Oct 23 '13 at 21:35
@njfife today is on server side as all JSPs are executed on the server – Aravind Yarram Oct 23 '13 at 23:28
Yeah, I don't think it is even possible to get the client side date from a JSP, you would have to do it in the Java script... oh well – njfife Oct 24 '13 at 16:28

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 04 '15 at 13:19

Thid would be helpfull if you use spring webflow framework

if you define this on the flow.xml

<on-start>
    <set name="flowScope.now" value="new java.util.Date()" />
</on-start>

You can get the value like this

<fmt:formatDate value="#{now}" pattern="MM.dd.yyyy" />

Is it possible to create a date value in Expression Language?

2 Answers2

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