Do most people allow users to type in a complete free-form text date? Or do you give them three boxes where they must put in month day and year separately?
I'm trying to come to terms with validation. I can't turn on the automatic validation <action validate="true" ... > because the users are allowed to leave the form before it's complete and come back to it. Will I still be able to use the plug-in Validator? (All the actions in the struts-validator example have 'validate' this turned on. :( I have the DAO layer that takes an internal format date (# of days since 1960-something) to my Value Object which now has a java.sql.Date: contactVO.setActualDate( java.sql.Date.valueOf( uSession.oconv( udArray.extract( 16 ), "D4-YMD" ).toString() ) ); But here's where I get lost. In order to copy the properties back and forth from Value Object to ActionForm, the types have to match. (Don't they?) But if I put a java.sql.Date into my ActionForm, then it will blow up when the user types 7/13/1985 rather than 1985-07-13 and submits the form. So, I need a String property in the ActionForm, and ... some special something that turns it into a java.sql.Date but will not blow up if the input is wrong? I'm going in circles. Any advice is appreciated! (Should I not be using java.sql.date?) I did search for 'struts date validation' with Google, but didn't find an answer. -- Wendy Smoak Applications Systems Analyst, Sr. Arizona State University PA Information Resources Management
