Dear All,

I want to share with you my findings on the topic of binding data originating from different HTML inputs straight into a java.util.Date.

It does not require any javascript, any new PropertyEditor, anything... Hopefully you will also like it!!!!

Let's consider an example. Your HTML view has:
  • an input for the day where you expect the user to enter DD/MM/YYYY
  • a drop down for selecting hours
  • a drop down for selecting minutes


Your form object has a java.util.Date attribute called travelDate.

The binding
  1. By naming all the HTML elements after the attribute name: travelDate
  2. Register a CustomDateEditor in your Controller (binder.registerCustomEditor) with a comma separated list of patterns that match in order the appearance of your HTML input fields. This is the trick!!


Spring will invoke the setAsText of your CustomDateEditor by passing the user input in the form of comma separated string. For instance '07/02/2007,14,37'.

This will in turn be parsed as a date.