I've tried to use the 'format' attribute of <display:column> tag to decorate a date property, but I get the following error in the log and the column remains unformatted:

ERROR MessageFormatColumnDecorator.decorate(66) | Caught an illegal argument exception while trying to format an object with pattern {0,date,dd/MM/yyyy}, returning the unformatted value. Object class is {0,date,dd/MM/yyyy}

The problematic column:

    <display:column property="inizioValidita" sortable="true" escapeXml="true"
         titleKey="fields.inizioValidita" format="{0,date,dd/MM/yyyy}"/>

I've tracked down the problem to the class MessageFormatColumnDecorator, line 62: the columnValue was a String instead of a Date. I think this i caused by another decorator, EscapeXmlColumnDecorator, that converts to String any Object it decorates. So I've tried to use escapeXml="false" in the above column tag and it worked.

I think that MessageFormatColumnDecorator should be the first decorator applied and the EscapeXmlColumnDecorator the last one to fulfill the Principle of Least Surprise.

BTW, I've also noticed that 4 tests fails when compiling the sources of 1.1 distribution