I would like to compare dates

Kyle Smith1

I want to make a macro that looks at an input date and if that date is in the past, I want to replace it with the current date. Here is what I'm looking at:

## @param inputDate:title=From Date|type=date|desc=Date to start from. Format: MM/dd/yy
#set ($currentDate=$action.dateFormatter.formatGivenString("MM/dd/yy", $content.currentDate))
 
#if ($paraminputDate.before($current_time))
 $currentDate
 #else 
 $paraminputDate
#end

Currently I'm only getting the else. So I'm assuming that I'm using the .before incorrectly. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

Edit: I got it working. Here is the code. I am using it for dynamic charts that display schedules.

## @param inputDate:title=From Date|type=date|desc=Date to start from. Format: MM/dd/yy 
#set($inputDate=$content.currentDate) 
$inputDate.setTime($content.currentDate.parse($paraminputDate))
#if ($inputDate.before($content.currentDate))  
$action.dateFormatter.formatGivenString("MM/dd/yy", $content.currentDate)  
#else  
$paraminputDate 
#end

Jonathan Simonoff

Although the parameter declares its type as "date", I don't think that really means anything – it ends up as a string.  So, you need to get that into a date object to call the .before method.  You can do that with something like the following.  (AFAIK you can't directly declare Java types in Velocity code, so what I do here is do something that makes a variable of the right type, and then change its value.)

#set($inputDate=$content.currentDate)
$inputDate.setTime($content.currentDate.parse($paraminputDate))
#if ($inputDate.before($current_time))
 $currentDate
 #else
 $paraminputDate
#end