How to set the Eclipse date variable format?

Question

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

Answer 1

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()); } }

Answer 2

You could tell Eclipse to use a specific locale different from that of your operating system. Eclipse 3.5 (64 bit) doesn't use the MacOS X region setting. MacOS X english installation language with Germany as country provides a wrong date format.

You can fix it for your Eclipse installation when you append following lines to your eclipse.ini:

-Duser.language=de
-Duser.region=DE