Date Variable Formatting¶
Many tags, including channel fields of the “date” type, are designed to display dates and times. The output of these tags can be formatted so that the date and time appears in the manner you wish. Here is an example of formatting the {current_time} global variable:
{current_time format="%F %d %Y"}
The “format” parameter enables you to format the date using the Date Formatting Codes listed below. Each code letter is always preceded by a percent sign. The example above would be rendered like this:
January 15 2006
You are allowed to use any character you want within the format parameter, except a percent sign. For example, this:
{current_time format="%D, %F %d, %Y - %g:%i:%s"}
Would be rendered like this:
Mon, January 15, 2006 - 10:23:45
Date Formatting Codes¶
| Variable | Description | Sample Rendering |
|---|---|---|
| Seconds | ||
| %s | seconds | “00” to “59” |
| %U | seconds since the epoch | |
| Minutes | ||
| %i | minutes | “00” - “59” |
| Hours | ||
| %g | hour, 12-hour format without leading zeros | “1” to “12” |
| %G | hour, 24-hour format without leading zeros | “0” to “23” |
| %h | hour, 12-hour format | “01” to “12” |
| %H | hour, 24-hour format | “00” to “23” |
| AM / PM | ||
| %a | “am” / “pm” | |
| %A | “AM” / “PM” | |
| Day | ||
| %d | day of the month, 2 digits with leading zeros | “01” to “31” |
| %D | day of the week, textual, 3 letters | “Fri” |
| %j | day of the month without leading zeros | “1” to “31” |
| %l | (lowercase ‘L’) - day of the week, textual, long | “Friday” |
| %w | day of the week, numeric | “0” (Sunday) to “6” (Saturday) |
| Week | ||
| %W | ISO-8601 week number of year, weeks starting on Monday | “42”: the 42nd week in the year |
| Month | ||
| %m | month | “01” to “12” |
| %M | month, textual, 3 letters | “Jan” |
| %F | month, textual, long | “January” |
| %n | month without leading zeros | “1” to “12” |
| %t | number of days in the given month | “28” to “31” |
| Year | ||
| %L | boolean for whether it is a leap year | “0” or “1” |
| %y | year, 2 digits | “99” |
| %Y | year, 4 digits | “1999” |
| %z | day of the year | “0” to “365” |
| Other | ||
| %B | Swatch Internet time | |
| %I | (capital i) | “1” if Daylight Saving Time, “0” otherwise |
| %O | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours | “-0500” |
| %P | Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) with colon between hours and minutes | “-05:00” |
| %r | RFC 2822 formatting | “Thu, 21 Dec 2000 16:01:07 +0200” |
| %S | English ordinal suffix, 2 characters | “th”, “nd” |
| %T | Time zone setting of this machine | MDT |
| %Z | time zone offset in seconds. The offset for time zones west of UTC is always negative, and for those east of UTC is always positive. | “-43200” to “43200” |
Date Formatting Constants¶
You may also use the pre-defined Date Formatting Constants listed below for easy access to some standard format strings. For example, this:
{current_time format="{DATE_ATOM}"}
Would be rendered like this:
2006-01-15T20:23:45-06:00
Available pre-defined formatting strings are described in the table below.
| Date Formatting Constants | ||
|---|---|---|
| Variable | Equivalent | Sample Rendering |
| {DATE_ATOM} | %Y-%m-%dT%H:%i:%s%Q | 2006-10-16T08:19:39-06:00 |
| {DATE_COOKIE} | %l, %d-%M-%y %H:%i:%s UTC | Monday, 16-Oct-06 08:19:39 UTC |
| {DATE_ISO8601} | %Y-%m-%dT%H:%i:%s%Q | 2006-10-16T08:19:39-05:00 |
| {DATE_RFC822} | %D, %d %M %y %H:%i:%s %O | Mon, 16 Oct 06 08:19:39 -0500 |
| {DATE_RFC850} | %l, %d-%M-%y %H:%i:%s UTC | Monday, 16-Oct-06 08:10:19 UTC |
| {DATE_RFC1036} | %D, %d %M %y %H:%i:%s %O | Mon, 16 Oct 06 08:19:39 -0500 |
| {DATE_RFC1123} | %D, %d %M %Y %H:%i:%s %O | Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:19:39 -0500 |
| {DATE_RFC2822} | %D, %d %M %Y %H:%i:%s %O | Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:19:39 -0500 |
| {DATE_RSS} | %D, %d %M %Y %H:%i:%s %O | Mon, 16 Oct 2006 08:19:39 -0500 |
| {DATE_W3C} | %Y-%m-%dT%H:%i:%s%Q | 2006-10-16T08:19:39-06:00 |
User Contributed Notes
{current_time} is output and adjusted for the user’s specified timezone (under their member profile), or if not logged in, in the default member’s timezone settings, or if that’s not set, in the server’s actual time zone.
If you only want to show entries for dates in the future (like in an events listing where you don’t want events that have passed to appear) but you can’t use the start_on parameter (perhaps because you are using a custom date field or are showing reverse_related_entries) you can use a conditional statement along with the date variable “%U” e.g.
{if '{entry_date format="%U"}' >= '{current_time format="%U"}'}blah
{/if}
The entry date, for SAEF forms, would be: value=”{entry_date format=’%Y-%m-%d %h:%m %A’}”
SafeCracker generates the format automatically without stipulating the formatting, but if you are adding functionality where you are giving users the ability to duplicate existing records (wrapping SafeCracker tags with channel tags) then you’ll need to add the entry_date formatting above.
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