Issue with kendo datepicker in Spring MVC - spring

Question

I have a form for adding students. For the date of birth i want to use kendo ui datepicker, but i don't know how the controller is making the binding with the model. If the name attribute of the date picker matches the class element, then i get the following error: The request sent by the client was syntactically incorrect. If the name attribute of the date picker is different, then on save button clicked the student is inserted into the database, but with the field date of birth being null.
Below is the content of the jsp file, the controller and the Student class.
What i am doing wrong?
jsp file
<div id="addStudent" class="space">
<div class="page-title">Add student</div>
<form:form commandName="addForm" method="post">
<div class="editor-field">
<label for="firstName">First name</label> <input
class="input k-popup k-list-container k-group k-reset" type="text"
name="firstName" />
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
<label for="lastName">Last name</label> <input
class="input k-popup k-list-container k-group k-reset" type="text"
name="lastName" />
</div>
<div class="editor-field">
<label for="dateOfBirth">Date of birth</label>
<kendo:datePicker name="dateOfBirth"></kendo:datePicker> //name attribute
</div>
<div class="editor-field left form-actions">
<a href="http://localhost:8080/GasfProject/gasf/main/menu/students"
class="k-button">Cancel</a>
<input class="k-button" type="submit" name="add" value="Save">
</div>
</form:form>
</div>
Controller
#RequestMapping(value = "/menu/addStudent", method = RequestMethod.POST)
public String addStudent(#ModelAttribute("addForm") Student model) {
logger.debug("Received request in add student post");
// insert in database
StudentDatabaseAccess.addNewStudent(model);
return "redirect:students";
}
Student
public class Student {
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
private Date dateOfBirth;
//getters and setters
}

Answer 1

You can try adding a DateTimeFormat annotation on the dateOfBirth field
public class Student {
private String firstName;
private String lastName;
#DateTimeFormat(pattern = "yyyy/MM/dd")
private Date dateOfBirth;
//getters and setters
}
This will tell spring how to convert the data from Date to String and from String to Date.
Make sure the pattern you set in the annotation is the same as the one you probably set on the kendo datepicker field in javascript.