Grails Date unmarshalling

The cleanest way is probably to register a custom DataBinder for possible date formats.

import java.beans.PropertyEditorSupport;import java.text.ParseException;import java.text.SimpleDateFormat;import java.util.ArrayList;import java.util.Collections;import java.util.List;public class CustomDateBinder extends PropertyEditorSupport {    private final List<String> formats;    public CustomDateBinder(List formats) {        List<String> formatList = new ArrayList<String>(formats.size());        for (Object format : formats) {            formatList.add(format.toString()); // Force String values (eg. for GStrings)        }        this.formats = Collections.unmodifiableList(formatList);    }    @Override    public void setAsText(String s) throws IllegalArgumentException {        if (s != null)            for (String format : formats) {                // Need to create the SimpleDateFormat every time, since it's not thead-safe                SimpleDateFormat df = new SimpleDateFormat(format);                try {                    setValue(df.parse(s));                    return;                } catch (ParseException e) {                    // Ignore                }            }    }}

You'd also need to implement a PropertyEditorRegistrar

import org.springframework.beans.PropertyEditorRegistrar;import org.springframework.beans.PropertyEditorRegistry;import grails.util.GrailsConfig;import java.util.Date;import java.util.List;public class CustomEditorRegistrar implements PropertyEditorRegistrar {    public void registerCustomEditors(PropertyEditorRegistry reg) {        reg.registerCustomEditor(Date.class, new CustomDateBinder(GrailsConfig.get("grails.date.formats", List.class)));    }}          

and create a Spring-bean definition in your grails-app/conf/spring/resources.groovy:

beans = {    "customEditorRegistrar"(CustomEditorRegistrar)}

and finally define the date formats in your grails-app/conf/Config.groovy:

grails.date.formats = ["yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.SSS ZZZZ", "dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss"]

Be aware that the new version of Grails 2.3+ supports this type of feature out of the box.See Date Formats for Data Binding

With that said, if you are forced to use a version of Grails prior to 2.3, the CustomEditorRegistrarcan be updated using the following code to eliminate the deprecation warning, and also uses the @Component annotation, which allows you to remove / skip the step of adding the bean directly in resources.groovy. Also not that I changed the grails configuration property name to grails.databinding.dateFormats, which matches the property now supported in Grails 2.3+. Finally, my version is a .groovy, not .java file.

import javax.annotation.Resourceimport org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.GrailsApplicationimport org.springframework.beans.PropertyEditorRegistrarimport org.springframework.beans.PropertyEditorRegistryimport org.springframework.stereotype.Component@Componentpublic class CustomEditorRegistrar implements PropertyEditorRegistrar {    @Resource    GrailsApplication grailsApplication    public void registerCustomEditors(PropertyEditorRegistry reg){        def dateFormats = grailsApplication.config.grails.databinding.dateFormats as List        reg.registerCustomEditor(Date.class, new CustomDateBinder(dateFormats))    }}