leave maskformatter field null

[melisa sabur]

Hello everyone,
Firstly thank your for your attention. I have prepared a project which uses JFormattedTextField and MaskFormatter.
But the main problem is the maskformatter that I've used is for date. like ( / / )
However the user dont have to fill that date they remain empty but I couldnt able o wrıte the code of that. Thanks for your help

lbldate=new JLabel("Date: ");
    final JFormattedTextField txtdate = new JFormattedTextField();
    MaskFormatter dateMask = null;
    try {
    dateMask = new MaskFormatter("##/##/####");
    }
    catch (ParseException ex) {
    Logger.getLogger(JavaApplication7.class.getName()).log(Level.SEVERE, null, ex);
    }

    txtdate.setInputVerifier(new InputVerifier() {
    public boolean verify(JComponent input) {
             if(txtdate.getText()!=null && txtdate.getText().length()>0){
                String date=txtdate.getText();
                if(!isDateValid(date,"dd/MM/yyyy")){
                    JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Given date is not valid");
                    return false;
                }
                else{
                    return true;
                }
             }
        return true;
      }
    });

    dateMask.setValueContainsLiteralCharacters(false);
    dateMask.install(txtdate);

    panel = new JPanel(new GridLayout(4,2));
    panel.add(lbldate);
    panel.add(txtdate);
    panel.add(lblnumber);
    panel.add(tf);
    panel.add(lbltext);
    panel.add(txttext);
    panel.add(lblbos);
    frame.add(panel);
    frame.pack();
    frame.setVisible(true);
    }


    public static boolean  isDateValid(String dateToValidate,String dateFormat){
    SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat(dateFormat);
    sdf.setLenient(false);
    try{
        Date date = sdf.parse(dateToValidate);
        return true;
    }
    catch(Exception e){
        return false;
        }
    }

[Michael Dunn]

this would be one of the ways

txtdate.setInputVerifier(new InputVerifier() {
  public boolean verify(JComponent input) {
         String date=txtdate.getText();
         if(date.trim().equals("/  /")) return true;//is empty
         else if(!isDateValid(date,"dd/MM/yyyy")){
                JOptionPane.showMessageDialog(null, "Given date is not valid");
                return false;
         }
    return true;
  }
});