title: Binding a Grails date from params in a controller
body: <p>Why is it so hard to extract the date from the view via the params in a grails controller?</p>
  
  <p>I don't want to extract the date by hand like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>instance.dateX = parseDate(params["dateX_value"])//parseDate is from my helper class
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I just want to use <code>instance.properties = params</code>.</p>
  
  <p>In the model the type is <code>java.util.Date</code> and in the params is all the information: <code>[dateX_month: 'value', dateX_day: 'value', ...]</code></p>
  
  <p>I searched on the net and found nothing on this. I hoped that Grails 1.3.0 could help but still the same thing.</p>
  
  <p>I can't and will not believe that extracting the date by hand is necessary!</p>