Get previous year from the current one in a JSP page

Question

Seems simple, but not for me. I can get the current year with:

<jsp:useBean id="date" class="java.util.Date" />
<fmt:formatDate value="${date}" pattern="yyyy" />

But I can't do a simple -1 in the resulting value because the operations dies there, as html text. I'd love to -1 the year from that ${date} but, well, it's a date.

I'm looking for a non-scriptlet, preferably JSTL solution. Thank you in advance.

Answer 1

JSTL converts values in the page based on appropriate coercions rules between object and primitives, so this should work:

<jsp:useBean id="date" class="java.util.Date" />
<fmt:formatDate value="${date}" pattern="yyyy" var="currentYear" />

<c:out value="${currentYear}" /> /
<c:out value="${currentYear - 1}" />

Or depending on your JSP version you can directly use ${currentYear} and ${currentYear - 1} without the <c:out>.

Answer 2

You can use EL.

<%@taglib uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/core" prefix="c"%> 
<%@ taglib prefix="fmt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jsp/jstl/fmt" %>
<jsp:useBean id="date" class="java.util.Date" />
<fmt:formatDate var="now" value="${date}" pattern="y" />  
Previous year is ${now - 1}