Help binding field to Date object

[frnkydz]

I'm used spring roo to create my project. In it I have created this form backing object

package edu.unlv.cs.rebelhotel.form;
@RooJavaBean
@RooToString
public class FormWorkEffortQuery {

	private String userId;
	private boolean userIdSelected;
	
    private String employerName;
    private boolean employerNameSelected;
    
    private String employerLocation;
    private boolean employerLocationSelected;

    @Enumerated
    private Validation validation;
    private boolean validationSelected;
    
    @Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)
    @DateTimeFormat(style = "S-")
    private Date startDate;

    @Temporal(TemporalType.TIMESTAMP)
    @DateTimeFormat(style = "S-")
    private Date endDate;
    
    private boolean datesSelected;
    
}

Here is my view....

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?>
<div xmlns:field="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/form/fields" xmlns:form="urn:jsptagdir:/WEB-INF/tags/form" xmlns:jsp="http://java.sun.com/JSP/Page" version="2.0">
    <jsp:directive.page contentType="text/html;charset=UTF-8"/>
    <jsp:output omit-xml-declaration="yes"/>
    
    
 <form:create id="fc_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffort" modelAttribute="formworkeffortquery" path="/workeffortquery?query" render="${empty dependencies}" z="Uf7OgrlFmtWkcuJmcJOSqG30iWM=">
    	
    	
    	
   <table>
    	<tr>
    	 	<td><field:input field="userId" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffort_NSHE"  z=""/></td>
        	<td><field:checkbox field="userIdSelected" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffortQuery_useUserId" /></td>
        </tr>
       	<tr>
       		<td><field:input field="employerName" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffort_employerName" z=""/></td>
   			<td><field:checkbox field="employerNameSelected" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffortQuery_useEmployerName" /></td>
      	</tr>
      	<tr>
      	 	<td><field:input field="employerLocation" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffort_employerLocation" z=""/></td>
       		<td><field:checkbox field="employerLocationSelected" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffortQuery_useemployerLocation" /></td>
        </tr>
       <tr>
       		<td> <field:select field="validation" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffort_validation" items="${validations}" path="validations" z=""/></td>
       		<td><field:checkbox field="validationSelected" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffortQuery_useValidation" /></td>
        </tr>
        <tr>
        	<td><field:datetime dateTimePattern="${formWorkEffort_startdate_date_format}" field="startDate" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffort_startDate" z=""/>
        	<field:datetime dateTimePattern="${formWorkEffort_enddate_date_format}" field="endDate" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffort_endDate" z=""/></td>
        	<td><field:checkbox field="datesSelected" id="c_edu_unlv_cs_rebelhotel_form_FormWorkEffortQuery_useDates" /></td>
        </tr>
        </table>
   </form:create>
 
</div>

Everything works fine except that whenever i try to enter a date into the endDate and startDate binding fails as i get this error:

[Failed to convert property value of type 'java.lang.String' to required type 'java.util.Date' for property 'endDate'.

I believed that spring mvc had default converters for dates.
I've been able to create a binder using propertyeditors for the date fields but that seems to take override the default type conversion for the other fields.
My question is how can i do the type conversion using the FormattingConversionServiceFatctorybean since I read that this is the direction that I should go.

I already tried to put a custom converter but it didn't seem to make a difference

	/**
 * A central place to register application Converters and Formatters.
 */
@RooConversionService
public class ApplicationConversionServiceFactoryBean extends
		FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean {

	Converter<String, java.util.Date> getStringConverter() {
		return new Converter<String, java.util.Date>() {
			
			public Date convert(String source) {
				SimpleDateFormat sdf = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy-MM-dd");
				java.util.Date date = new java.util.Date();
				try {
					date = sdf.parse(source);
				} catch (ParseException e) {
					// TODO Auto-generated catch block
					e.printStackTrace();
				}
				
				// TODO Auto-generated method stub
				return date;
			}
		};
	}
}

	@Override
	protected void installFormatters(FormatterRegistry registry) {

super.installFormatters(registry);
		// Register application converters and formatters
registry.addConverter(getStringConverter());

}