Automatic conversion from string to date in JSP

Question

I am not sure why the following code works: str is a date in the format 2011-11-04 15:54:48.38 . It is a string. When executing the following code:

<fmt:parseDate var="xxx" type="date" pattern="y-M-d H:m:s" value="${str}" />
xxx: <c:out value="${xxx}"></c:out><br />
xxx.time: <c:out value="${xxx.time}"></c:out><br />
str.time: <c:out value="${str.time}"></c:out><br />
str: <c:out value="${str}"></c:out><br />

I get this output

xxx: Fri Nov 04 15:54:48 GMT 2011
xxx.time: 1320422088038
str.time: 1320422088380
str: 2011-11-04 15:54:48.38

How is that possible? Is there any automatic conversion in place for the str.time value? How do these conversions work?

Answer 1

You are getting that output because the "getTime()" of a Date object returns the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT represented by the Date object.

Edit:

Use: http://www.epochconverter.com/

And put in the seconds outputs, you'll see it corresponds back to your dates.

Answer 2

I think you're not running the code you think you're running. This one should definitely throw a PropertyNotFoundException on ${str.time} . To naildown it, add the following line to find out what ${str} actually is.

<c:out value="${str.class.name}" />

It's apparently a class which prints the given string format on toString() and has a getTime() method.