RegExpValidator and DateItem

[mswiege]

I'm using a DateItem with setUseTextField set to true. I'm using European date format which is "dd.MM.yyyy".
That is why I set the date formater at the beginning of my form like this:

        DateDisplayFormatter dateFormater = new DateDisplayFormatter() {
            @Override
            public String format(Date date) {
                if (date == null) return null;
                DateTimeFormat dateFormatter = DateTimeFormat.getFormat("dd.MM.yyyy");
                return dateFormatter.format(date);
            }
        };
        DateUtil.setShortDateDisplayFormatter(dateFormater);
        DateUtil.setDateInputFormatter(new DateInputFormatter()
        {
            @Override
            public Date parse(String dateString) {
                final DateTimeFormat dateFormatter = DateTimeFormat.getFormat("dd.MM.yyyy");
                Date date = dateFormatter.parse(dateString);
                return date;
            }            
        });

Now I also want to use a validator to check the input of the text field, so I created a RegExValidator. But the validator reports an invalid value even if a valid date is entered. I checked the regular expression and it should be fine.
This is my code for the DateItem:

DateItem birthDateDI = new DateItem("birthdate");
        birthDateDI.setUseTextField(true);
        birthDateDI.setValidators(new RegExpValidator("^(0?[1-9]|[12][0-9]|3[01])\\.(0?[1-9]|1[012])\\.(19|20)\\d\\d$"));
        birthDateDI.setValidateOnExit(true);

Entering for example "27.10.2010" into the text box or select a date with the calendar, results in the validator claiming the date entered is invalid.
What am I doing wrong here?

[Isomorphic]

Set the date input format to "DMY", and note also you don't need to set a custom function for this type of display, it's one of the default formats (note the separator char is settable).

[mswiege]

Thanks Isomorphic for your reply, but I don't get it. Where should I set the date format to DMY and the seperator char?
The only function I could find was setMaskDateSeparator(), but that had no effect.
I removed the whole lines with DateUtil functions and used this code

        birthDateDI.setUseTextField(true);
        birthDateDI.setMaskDateSeparator(".");
       birthDateDI.setDateFormatter(DateDisplayFormat.TOEUROPEANSHORTDATE);
        birthDateDI.setValidateOnExit(true);

But still the date is shown with "/" as seperator instead of "." (but the validator seems to work fine now).

[Isomorphic]

All the relevant APIs are on DateUtil. The API to set the separator char is recently added however, so you'd need a nightly (smartclient.com/builds).

[mswiege]

OK, thanks. Will try that...