[HTTPClient] Locale Date in headers (bug for non-US)

[yannick]

Hello,

This is a bug report.

I'm using Commons HTTPClient (rc2) for generating HTTP requests. I put in 
headers some specific header, like the If-Modified-Since attribute. 
When I generate the date through DateUtil.formatDate method, I get a 
localized date, in french. Example: 
If-Modified-Since: dim., 10 avr. 2005 05:04:08 CEST

I get problems on my http server during parsing the received date. This is 
not a RFC 2616 compliant date format. It should be:
If-Modified-Since: Sun, 10 Apr 2005 05:04:08 CEST

A patch should be applied, by creating a new SimpleDateFormat(pattern, 
Locale.US) instead of SimpleDateFormat(pattern) (like it is done in the 
parse method, line #159).

org.apache.commons.httpclient.util.DateUtil, line #205:

    public static String formatDate(Date date, String pattern) {
        if (date == null) throw new IllegalArgumentException("date is 
null");
        if (pattern == null) throw new IllegalArgumentException("pattern 
is null");
 
        SimpleDateFormat formatter = new SimpleDateFormat(pattern, 
Locale.US);
        return formatter.format(date);
    }


Regards,

Yannick.