How to return specific date format as JSON in Grails?

Question

In Grails, you can use the JSON converters to do this in the controller:

render Book.list() as JSON

The render result is

[
{"id":1,
 "class":"Book",
 "author":"Stephen King",
 "releaseDate":'2007-04-06T00:00:00',
 "title":"The Shining"}
]

You can control the output date by make a setting in Config.groovy

grails.converters.json.date = 'javascript' // default or javascipt

Then the result will be a navtive javascript date

[
{"id":1,
 "class":"Book",
 "author":"Stephen King",
 "releaseDate":new Date(1194127343161),
 "title":"The Shining"}
]

If I want to get a specific date format like this:

"releaseDate":"06-04-2007"

I have to do 'collect'

return Book.list().collect(){
  [
      id:it.id,
      class:it.class,
      author:it.author,
      releaseDate:new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("dd-MM-yyyy").format(it.releaseDate),
      title:it.title
  ]
} as JSON

which requires a lot of typing. Is there a simpler way to do it?

Answer 1

There is a simple solution: Since Grails 1.1 the Converters have been rewritten to be more modular. Unfortunately I didn't finish the documentation for that. It allows now to register so called ObjectMarshallers (simple Pogo/Pojo's that implement the org.codehaus.groovy.grails.web.converters.marshaller.ObjectMarshaller interface).

To achieve your desired output, you could register such an ObjectMarshaller in BootStrap.groovy that way:

import grails.converters.JSON;

class BootStrap {

     def init = { servletContext ->
         JSON.registerObjectMarshaller(Date) {
            return it?.format("dd-MM-yyyy")
         }
     }
     def destroy = {
     }
}

There are several other ways to customize the output of the Converters and I'll do my best do catch up with the documentation asap.

Answer 2

Or you could work at the Date level itself. This might not be exactly what you want but it could spark an idea for a solution that would work consistently across your whole app.

def doWithDynamicMethods = {ctx ->

  def customDateToString = {->
        def dateFormat = "dd MMM yyyy"
        def timeFormat = "hh:mm:ss a"

        def timeCheck = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("hh:mm:ss SSS a")
        def formattedTime = timeCheck.format(delegate)
        def formatString = dateFormat
        if (formattedTime != "12:00:00 000 AM") 
                              formatString = "$formatString $timeFormat"
        def formatter = new java.text.SimpleDateFormat("$formatString")
        formatter.format(delegate)
    }

    Date.metaClass.toString = customDateToString;
    java.sql.Timestamp.metaClass.toString = customDateToString;
}