How to format a date type value in a velocity template ? about xdocreport HOT 3 CLOSED

Hi Angelo,

Thanks for your response. You're right is about a Velocity template comment => off topic, sorry.

I don't think is a bad idea to format date inside the Velocity template. In fact, this aspect concerns the UI layer and it's the purpose of a template, isn't it ?

Any way, for my problem, here is my solution

A declare a DateTool instance

context.put("date", new DateTool());

DateTool is a class from Velocity-tools-x.x.jar. You need to add this dependency into your pom.xml.

Into the Velocity template (in fact the docx template), i change for that

$date.format("dd-MM-yyyy", $incoming.birthday)

Mickael

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@mickaelbaron your issue is about Velocity template engien uses. To be honnest with you I have never played with date & Velocity. You can find a sample at http://www.java2s.com/Code/Java/Velocity/HowtouseDateinVelocity.htm

IMHO I think it's a bad idea to format date inside docx template, because mergefield write is more complex.

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I don't think is a bad idea to format date inside the Velocity template. In fact, this aspect concerns the UI layer and it's the purpose of a template, isn't it ?

I agree with you, docx template is the UI Layer. When you use Velocity to generate HTML, I agree with you, date must be formatted inside the template. In this case, the HTML template is written by a developer.

But in the case of docx template, I think formatting must be done not inside docx template because :

• template can be created by a non developer (like secratary), so field name must be simple.
• when mergefield is too long, MS Word doesnt displays the full name of the mergefield. So it's a little hard to read the field name.
• the XDocReport Macro https://code.google.com/p/xdocreport/wiki/DocxDesignReportMacro works with simple field name.

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