Date Parsing And Date Formatting In JSP Using JSTL

Many times we come across a situation where we want to create java.util.Date object in JSP with the String date. JSTL provides you parseDate tag for parsing the date string and creating date object.

First you have to add formatting tag lib into your project.

put <%@ taglib prefix="fmt" uri="http://java.sun.com/jstl/formatting"%> on the top of your JSP.

Say you have date string in a variable dateStr. Then to make date object out of it you have to write following code.

<fmt:parseDate var="dateObj" value="${dateStr}" type="DATE" pattern="yyyy-MM-dd"/>

This will parse the given date string with the given pattern and create java.util.Date object. you can access the date object with the variable name you have provided in var attribute.

If you want to format the date object then you can use formatDate tag.

<fmt:formatDate value="${dateObj}" pattern="MMM dd, yyyy"/>

note: For pattern string please check java website.

tag will print the formatted date on the page. So no need to put this into tag.

You can also use var attribute to store formatted string into variable.