Date formatting with locale in Play Framework 2.2

Question

From what I can see in the auto-generated application.conf file, dates/times in Play Framework 2.2 are formatted according to the definition of date.format in that file. I have, for instance, defined

date.format=yyyy-MM-dd
date.format.dk=d. MMMM yyyy

These values, however, seem to be ignored by the framework when printing dates in Scala templates. This thread gives a solution where one enters the pattern directly into the template as myDate.format("yyyy-MM-dd"). (If using Jodatime I guess this becomes myDate.toDate().format("yyyy-MM-dd") since there is no format() defined on the DateTime class.) But not only does this force one to repeat the pattern each time a date is displayed, it also ignores the current locale.

So what is the intended way to format date and time in Play Framework 2.2.x with respect to different locales?

Answer 1

In short, if you want to hard code the locale and use JodaTime:

@(date: org.joda.DateTime)
@import java.util.Locale
@date.format("yyyy-MMM-dd", new Locale("sv", "SE"))

if you want to use the locale selected from the browser lang header (you will also need the request implicitly to your template):

@(date: org.joda.DateTime)(implicit lang: play.api.i18n.Lang)
@date.format("yyyy-MMM-dd", lang.toLocale)

I wrote a detailed blog entry about this (since I have seen the question so many times):

https://markatta.com/codemonkey/blog/2013/10/14/formatted-localized-dates-in-playframework-2/