How to input Date to a Struts2 action from a jsp?

Question

I am facing a lot of problems here in my jsp page. What tag I should use to get a date (yyyy-MM-dd) from user and store it in a Date property of a Struts2 action ?

The property in my action is declared to be of java.util.Date. I want the input from jsp page to land in this property.

please help.

I get Invalid field error (in JSP) if is use a s:textfield tag to manyally enter a date in the right format.

Answer 1

This is how I solved this.

    <s:date name="nameOfInputVal" var="formattedVal"/>
    <s:textfield name="nameOfInputVal" value="%{#formattedVal}" key="labelkey" />

And in your message properties a key/value:

struts.date.format=dd/MM/yyyy

Which indicates the default format and you don't have to write it in each date tag.

Hope this helps

Answer 2

I know this post is a bit old but a solution may be useful to others.

The default converter of Struts does not seem to work properly. The field error even occurs with readonly fields populated from the action.

I resolved it by defining my own converter:

1. Create the converter class (using the date format you need):

   public class StringToDateTimeConverter extends StrutsTypeConverter {
       // WARNING not safe in multi-threaded environments
       private static final DateFormat DATETIME_FORMAT = new SimpleDateFormat("dd-MMM-yyyy hh:mm:ss");
   
       public Object convertFromString(Map context, String[] strings, Class toClass) {     
           if (strings == null || strings.length == 0 || strings[0].trim().length() == 0) {
               return null;
           }
   
           try {
               return DATETIME_FORMAT.parse(strings[0]);
           } catch (ParseException e) {
               throw new TypeConversionException("Unable to convert given object to date: " + strings[0]);
           }
       }
   
       public String convertToString(Map context, Object date) {
           if (date != null && date instanceof Date) {         
               return DATETIME_FORMAT.format(date);
           } else {
               return null;
           }
       }
   }
   

2. Put the conversion annotation on the property setter (or use a conversion.properties file)

   @Conversion()
   public class MyEditAction {
       // ...
   
       @TypeConversion(converter="my.app.common.converter.StringToDateTimeConverter")
       public void setUploadedDate(Date uploadedDate) {
           this.uploadedDate = uploadedDate;
       }
   

In my case I did not need to edit it but wanted to specify the format in the jsp. I used an additional hidden field to keep the original value (another alternative would have been the use of Preparable interface):

<s:textfield name="uploadedDateDisplay" value="%{getText('format.datetimesecond',{uploadedDate})}" size="70" disabled="true"/>
<s:hidden name="uploadedDate" />