Simple way to get the current date/time into a JSP output

[Pat Farrell]

I want to display the current date/time in a JSP page. I'd like it to be formatted in the proper style for the current locale.

It looks like the taglib function "fmt:formatDate" is the right place to look, but I don't see a good place to get the
value. Clearly for some "niceDate" this will work

<fmt:formatDate value="${niceDate}" pattern="M"/>

But I don't see a good place to get a date. There clearly is a date time in the HTTP response's header, specifically something like

Date Mon, 31 May 2010 22:12:41 GMT

But I am not having luck finding how to get that into the JSP/EL context.

[Bear Bibeault]

<jsp:useBean id="niceDate" class="java.util.Date"/>    

[Pat Farrell]

Thanks, that's simple enough

[Bear Bibeault]

I love simple!