Based on a quick tutorial from ?Parameter Jasper Report , i'm trying to make a date range value as paramete to Jasper Report using Jaspersoft iReport Designer 5.6.0 as attached in iReport Designer DATERANGE.txt with Parameter : 
and Custom Header :
<form action="" method="GET">
<div>
<label>date1</label><input type="date" name="date1" value="#requestParam.date1#"/>
</div>
<div>
<label>date2</label><input type="date" name="date2" value="#requestParam.date2#"/>
</div>
<div>
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Submit"/>
</div>
</form>
but resulted an error message :
" Invalid Jasper Report Definition (JRXML)
Cause:
java.lang.String cannot be cast to java.util.Date "
Then I changed the parameter from "date" to "text" and replaced
<parameter name="date1" class="java.util.Date"/>
to
<parameter name="date1" class="java.lang.String"/>
and unfortunatelly resulted a blank page.
I hope someone can help me about this case, thank you...