How to override Joda-Time GSP tag output

Question

I am using the Joda-Time plug-in for Grails, and so far it has been a huge help. A massive improvement over the Java Date/Callendar method. Anyway, I am rendering Period data using the GSP tags as follows:

<joda:formatPeriod value="${ shift?.totalTime }" fields="hours,minutes" />

The tag renders the HTML as, 11 hours and 32 minutes. That's great but I need to override the text and change it to 11hrs. 32min..

Does anyone have experience doing this? I haven't found any examples as I've Googled the interwebs. I think this would help many others, as well.

BTW: I am really grateful to the Joda-Time creators. It's one of the most useful libraries/plugins I've found.

Answer 1

If you aren't concerned about localized text and will only have hours and minutes, then a simple solution would be to write your own little tag to do the formatting. Something like:

def formatPeriod = { attrs ->
    def periodFormatter = new PeriodFormatterBuilder().appendHours().appendSuffix("hrs.").appendSeparator(" ").appendMinutes().appendSuffix("min.").toFormatter()

    out << periodFormatter.print(attrs.value)
}

Here's sample output from a groovy shell:

groovy:000> period = new Period().withHours(11).withMinutes(32)
===> PT11H32M
groovy:000> formatter = PeriodFormat.wordBased()
===> org.joda.time.format.PeriodFormatter@6d2ddeee
groovy:000> formatter.print(period)
===> 11 hours and 32 minutes
groovy:000> periodFormatter = new PeriodFormatterBuilder().appendHours().appendSuffix("hrs.").appendSeparator(" ").appendMinutes().appendSuffix("min.").toFormatter()
===> org.joda.time.format.PeriodFormatter@56048075
groovy:000> periodFormatter.print(period)
===> 11hrs. 32min.