Nullable date in Freemarker

Question

This is a piece of my freemarker template:

${order.needByDate?if_exists?date}

I want it to work as following:

• if needByDate is null, then write nothing
• if it is not null, then write the date part

The above works only in second scenario. What is the correct way to achieve this?

Answer 1

There may be a smarter way of doing this but the following should do the job.

<#if order.needByDate??>${order.needByDate?date}</#if>

Answer 2

This should also work

${(order.needByDate?date)!}

The parentheses are necessary

You can also add a default value such as "n/a" like this

${(order.needByDate?date)!"n/a"}