## 6.3.2 Simple Tags

As demonstrated it the previous example it is trivial to write simple tags that have no body and merely output content. Another example is a `dateFormat` style tag:

    def dateFormat = { attrs, body ->
    	out << new java.text.SimpleDateFormat(attrs.format).format(attrs.date)
    }

The above uses Java's `SimpleDateFormat` class to format a date and then write it to the response. The tag can then be used within a GSP as follows:

    <g:dateFormat format="dd-MM-yyyy" date="${new Date()}" />

With simple tags sometimes you need to write HTML mark-up to the response. One approach would be to embed the content directly:

    def formatBook = { attrs, body ->
        out << "<div id="${attrs.book.id}">"
        out << "Title : ${attrs.book.title}"
    	out << "</div>"
    }

Although this approach may be tempting it is not very clean. A better approach would be to re-use the render tag:

    def formatBook = { attrs, body ->
        out << render(template:"bookTemplate", model:[book:attrs.book])
    }

And then have a separate GSP template that does the actual rendering.