Question

I have a date format like “MMMM dd, yyyy” and i am using <fmt:formatDate value="${purchaseDate}" pattern="MMMM dd, yyyy"/> and i have to compare this with the current date and check whether the purchase date is less than a year from current date or not?? Any suggestion how this can be done…

Answer 1

I think you would have to resort to scriptlets <% //... your code ... %> in this case.

And if you go with scriptlets then it would be simple Java Data comparison as shown here.
You can also create a method in a utility class with comparison logic and then call it from your JSP.

I personally don’t prefer scriptlets in my JSP code, so:

1. I would normally do this logic inside a java class and set a flag in request and pass it on to JSP. But this depends on how much logic you would need to do after this simple comparison.
2. Or you can build a simple custom-tag to do the logic for you (might be an overkill!)

So, if you really need to go with comparing dates in JSP then I guess scriptlets would be the only way to go.

Hope this gives some food for thought.