selectOneMenu with Date using different pattern for value and label

Question

I want to build a Weekday select menu. Weekdays are initialized to first weekday of year 1970.

The converter converts the value to a date. But I want to display the full text weekday using java date pattern "EEEE".

<h:selectOneMenu id="day" label="#{msg.day_u}" required="true" value="#{date}">
    <f:convertDateTime pattern="dd/mm/yyyy"/>
    <f:selectItem itemValue="05/01/1970" itemLabel="display Monday using pattern"/>
    <!-- other weekdays -->
</h:selectOneMenu>

This is not working. Right now I am using a custom EL function to retrieve a localized weekday in the label attribute.

Is there a way to use it with a date pattern?

The reasoning of this odd approach is that you want to localize weekday names, right? — BalusC
yes, but "05/01/1970" is a date which should be stored in the database later for weekday retrieval — djmj
Oh okay. Then using some (existing!) constants are out the question, right? — BalusC
you mean the Calendar day constants? I think its out of question. I am trying to store a generic weekday timerange for store opening times. I have two Date fields "start" and "end" who's weekday is always equal and like "05/01/1970" and in my form used entity, there is some logic to enfore this equality. (There is a "day" getter and setter but no day property, it just sets day of start and end Date properties, and "start" and "end" only sets hour and minutes) — djmj

BalusC BalusC · Accepted Answer · 2012-04-26T03:34:18

The converter will indeed not be applied on the option label. It's only applied on the option value. It should work just fine with an EL function. Assuming that you've a List<Date> as available items and Date as selected item, then this should do:

<f:selectItems value="#{bean.weekdays}" var="day" 
    itemValue="#{day}" itemLabel="#{util:formatDate(day, 'EEEEE')}" />

where formatDate() look like this

public static String formatDate(Date date, String pattern) {
    if (date == null) {
        return null;
    }

    if (pattern == null) {
        throw new NullPointerException("pattern");
    }

    Locale locale = FacesContext.getCurrentInstance().getViewRoot().getLocale();
    return new SimpleDateFormat(pattern, locale).format(date);
}

OmniFaces has by the way exactly this function.

selectOneMenu with Date using different pattern for value and label

1 Answers