Date formatting part of text in Jasper / ireports

Question

how do I format a date field (database field) displayed part of a text in Jasper / iReports (4.5.1)

Displayed via a text field in the report... (using Groovy please)

"Sub total for this date: " + $F(DEPOSIT_DATE)

I have tried (new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy")).parse($F{DEPOSIT_DATE})and I am getting error message:

net.sf.jasperreports.engine.fill.JRExpressionEvalException: 
Error evaluating expression : Source text : (new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy")).parse($F{BANK_DATE}) 

What I want to display in my report is as follows...

Sub total for this date: MM/DD/YYYY - format...

Answer 1

Try this:

new SimpleDateFormat("MM/dd/yyyy").format($F{BANK_DATE})

Answer 2

I agree with Mateusz, textField with pattern perfrormes faster than new SimpleDateFormat("someFormat").format("jasperField"). It's important when you have deal with huge reports. This is my example

<textField pattern="MM/dd/yyyy" isBlankWhenNull="true">
...
    <textFieldExpression class="java.util.Date"><![CDATA[$F{certIssueDate}]]></textFieldExpression>
</textField>