getting Date out with JSTL

[liliya woland]

I'd like to be able to check via JSTL fmt library the time of the day, (say if it is 2 pm or not) and attach html tags based on output of the test. For some reason I'm not getting any errors or the date out when I do the following:

 
<fmt:parseDate value="${now}" dateStyle="full"/>

Could someone tell me please what I'm missing from the above?...I do import the fmt library.

[jay lai]

<fmt:formatDate type="both" dateStyle="default" timeStyle="default" value="${now}" />

[liliya woland]

I'm still not getting anything out. I declare var now as follows:

<% Date now = new java.util.Date(); %>

and I access it (as suggested above), but no date is shown. Since I need time of the date, maybe there is a way of getting just the time?

[liliya woland]

got it, works now!

[Bear Bibeault]

Originally posted by liliya woland:
maybe there is a way of getting just the time?

If now is a Date, why are you messing around with parseDate?

You have a copy of the JSTL Spec handy, right? Look up formatDate and see what it has that can help you.

Hint: also look up java.text.DateFormat

[liliya woland]

So I did clean up the jstl code and now I do get the time only. I'm doing this to test if it is 2pm. I'd like to be able to do this using jstl notation, although writing a scriplet will probably be faster.
I'd like to have a test that would do something as below, but don't know if this is at all possible via jstl.

<c:if test="${time_now endsWith"PM" && time_now startsWith 2 }">
do something
</c:if>

Thank you in advance.

[Bear Bibeault]

Did you look at formatDate as I suggested?

[liliya woland]

Yes, I got the time out of it with

    
<jsp:useBean id="now" class="java.util.Date" />
<fmt:formatDate type="time" timeStyle="default" value="${now}" var="time_now"/>

I actually found my old java code for getting all the info I need (hour,ampm), so I think I'm going with a scriptlet and plain java code - takes much less time.

[Bear Bibeault]

Originally posted by liliya woland:
so I think I'm going with a scriptlet and plain java code - takes much less time.

Not the best of attitudes.

Here's the way:

<fmt:formatDate value="${now}" pattern="k" var="hourOfDay"/>
<c:if test="${hourOfDay == 14}">
  ...
    

The secret is in knowing how to use the pattern attribute.
[ April 18, 2007: Message edited by: Bear Bibeault ]