Struts 2 - The Date Tag

Quiz

The date tag allows to format a Date in a quick and easy way. User can specify a custom format (eg. "dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm"), can generate easy readable notations (like "in 2 hours, 14 minutes"), or can just fall back on a predefined format with key 'struts.date.format' in the properties file.

Create Action Class

package com.tutorialspoint.struts2;

import java.util.*;

public class HelloWorldAction {
   private Date currentDate;
   
   public String execute() throws Exception {
      setCurrentDate(new Date());
      return "success";
   }
   public void setCurrentDate(Date date) {
      this.currentDate = date;
   }
   public Date getCurrentDate() {
      return currentDate;
   }
}

Create Views

Let us have HelloWorld.jsp with the following content −

<%@ page contentType = "text/html; charset = UTF-8" %>
<%@ taglib prefix = "s" uri = "/struts-tags" %>

<html>
   <head>
      <title>Hello World</title>
   </head>
   
   <body>
      <h2>Current Date</h2>

      <h3>Day/Month/Year Format</h3>
      <s:date name = "currentDate" format = "dd/MM/yyyy" />

      <h3>Month/Day/Year Format</h3>
      <s:date name = "currentDate" format = "MM/dd/yyyy" />
         
   </body>
</html>

Configuration Files

Your struts.xml should look like −

<?xml version = "1.0" Encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE struts PUBLIC
   "-//Apache Software Foundation//DTD Struts Configuration 2.0//EN"
   "http://struts.apache.org/dtds/struts-2.0.dtd">
<struts>
   <constant name = "struts.devMode" value = "true" />
   <package name = "helloworld" extends = "struts-default">

      <action name = "hello" 
         class = "com.tutorialspoint.struts2.HelloWorldAction" 
         method = "execute">
         <result name = "success">/HelloWorld.jsp</result>
      </action>

   </package>
</struts>

Your web.xml should look like −

<?xml version = "1.0" Encoding = "UTF-8"?>
<web-app xmlns:xsi = "http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
   xmlns = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee" 
   xmlns:web = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_2_5.xsd"
   xsi:schemaLocation = "http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee 
   http://java.sun.com/xml/ns/javaee/web-app_3_0.xsd"
   id = "WebApp_ID" version = "3.0">
   
   <display-name>Struts 2</display-name>
   
   <welcome-file-list>
      <welcome-file>index.jsp</welcome-file>
   </welcome-file-list>
   
   <filter>
      <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
      <filter-class>
         org.apache.struts2.dispatcher.FilterDispatcher
      </filter-class>
   </filter>

   <filter-mapping>
      <filter-name>struts2</filter-name>
      <url-pattern>/*</url-pattern>
   </filter-mapping>
</web-app>

Right click on the project name and click Export > WAR File to create a War file. Then deploy this WAR in the Tomcat's webapps directory. Finally, start Tomcat server and try to access URL http://localhost:8080/HelloWorldStruts2/hello.action. This will produce the following screen −

struts_data_tags.htm

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