Spring MVC ignores global date format?

Question

I'm trying to register a global date format in my Spring MVC application. I have followed the documentation. The relevant part of my Spring config file looks like this:

<beans:bean id="conversionService" class="org.springframework.format.support.FormattingConversionServiceFactoryBean">
        <beans:property name="registerDefaultFormatters" value="false" />
        <beans:property name="formatters">
            <beans:set>
                <beans:bean class="org.springframework.format.number.NumberFormatAnnotationFormatterFactory" />
            </beans:set>
        </beans:property>
        <beans:property name="formatterRegistrars">
            <beans:set>
                <beans:bean class="org.springframework.format.datetime.DateFormatterRegistrar">
                    <beans:property name="formatter">
                        <beans:bean class="org.springframework.format.datetime.DateFormatter">
                            <beans:property name="pattern" value="yyyyMMdd"/>
                        </beans:bean>
                    </beans:property>
                </beans:bean>
            </beans:set>
        </beans:property>
    </beans:bean>

    <!-- Enables the Spring MVC @Controller programming model -->
    <annotation-driven conversion-service="conversionService" />

Based on the documentation, it is my understanding that this should use the configured DateFormatter for all my java.util.Date properties that I write out. However, when I just write out a date (of type java.util.Date in my JSP file like this:

Availability Date: ${model.availabilityDate}

It still writes out the date in the default SHORT format, effectively ignoring my default format.

I am aware that I can register @InitBinder methods, or specify formats with @DateTimeFormat, but that's not the point. I would like to change the global default to ensure consistent output of dates in specific format, unless specified otherwise.

I found other questions on SO similar to this one, however none seem to help me solve my problem:

• Set default/global date format in Spring MVC to ISO 8601
• Set date format for an input text using Spring MVC
• spring mvc date format with form:input

Answer 1

It seems the global default format only applies to marshalling of dates to and from input fields, and not when writing the date out directly using JSP.