Question

How can I set the format for the ${date} variable which can be used in Eclipse templates?

Answer 1

Update February 2016: bug 75981 is officially fixed!
See Jmini‘s answer below

---

Update July 2015, 6 years later:

The bug mentioned below seems fixed in Eclipse 4.x.
Eric Wang comments below:

@date ${id:date('YYYY-MMM-dd')} ${time} 

this give me English datetime format in eclipse 4.

---

Original Answer 2009 Eclipse 3.x

Argh! There is a long standing bug just for that: bug 75981

The ${date} variable could be enhanced to accept an argument (similar to other
parameterizations added in 3.3M1), e.g. ${d:date(format)}, where format is a pattern for SimpleDateFormat.

The only alternative would be to modify the class SimpleTemplateVariableResolver (as described in this thread), from the package org.eclipse.jface.text.templates. (You have here an example of such an extension).

This thread mentions the sources where you can find the class.

\eclipse\plugins\org.eclipse.platform.source_3.1.0\src\org.eclipse.text_3.1.0\src.zip

Example:

public static class Date extends SimpleTemplateVariableResolver {
/**
* Creates a new date variable
*/
public Date() {
super("date", TextTemplateMessages.getString("GlobalVariables.variable.description.date")); //$NON-NLS-1$ //$NON-NLS-2$ }

protected String resolve(TemplateContext context) {
    //return DateFormat.getDateInstance().format(new java.util.Date());
    DateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat("dd/MM/yyyy");
    return df.format(new java.util.Date()); } }