Parsing and binding date formats from params in Grails.

"Grails is a powerful web framework for the Java platform aimed at multiplying developers' productivity" - grails.

We recently decided to rewrite some parts of our software ( written in grails )as web applications. 

The reason we made that decision is something I hope to write about soon. The task required us to send JSON strings (POST request) that contain datetime information along with other bits for data to the server. 

To bind a date string from the 'param' seamlessly ( without writing extra code to extract the date in your controller) you need to add the following to your grails config file ( config.groovy or application.yml ).

grails.databinding.dateFormats = [ "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX", "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZ" ,'yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss.S','MMddyyyy' ]


With the above configuration in place, there was no need to extract the date and bind it manually to the domain class or command object.