Date and time patterns

Dates and times in a template originating from a date field in a record set can be displayed using a custom pattern. You can type the pattern directly in the Format field in the Text Script Wizard, lest the field type is set to Date in a Data Mapping Configuration and the field contains a valid date; see Using the Text Script Wizard and Formatting variable data. In the Script Editor, the pattern can be passed to a date, dateTime or Time function of the formatter; see formatter.

The custom pattern may consist of pattern letters (see below), for example: "MM/dd/yyyy". The components can be separated with a space or a symbol, e.g. ., /, -. Text must be put in quotes.

The repetition of pattern letters determines the exact presentation. For example, if the number of pattern letters for a month is less than 3 (M or MM), the month is displayed as a number. If the number of pattern letters is 3 (MMM), it will be displayed as text; if available, a short or abbreviated form of the month's name will be used. If the number of pattern letters is 4 or more (MMMM), the month's full name is displayed.

The pattern letters and patterns on this page are only suitable for displaying dates and times in templates, not for extracting dates in the DataMapper module. For pattern letters and patterns available in the DataMapper, see Date.

Pattern letters

Letter Component Presentation Examples
G Era designator Text AD
y Year Year 1996; 96
Y Week year Year 2009; 09
M Month in year Month July; Jul; 07
w Week in year Number 27
W Week in month Number 2
D Day in year Number 189
d Day in month Number 10
F Day of week in month Number 2
E Day name in week Text Tuesday; Tue
u Day number of week (1 = Monday, ..., 7 = Sunday) Number 1
a Am/pm marker Text PM
H Hour in day (0-23) Number 0
k Hour in day (1-24) Number 24
K Hour in am/pm (0-11) Number 0
h Hour in am/pm (1-12) Number 12
m Minute in hour Number 30
s Second in minute Number 55
S Millisecond Number 978
z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800
X Time zone ISO 8601 time zone -08; -0800; -08:00
These date and time pattern letters and patterns conform to standard Java notation. For more information, see http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html.
  
  • Last Topic Update: 11:05 AM Apr-06-2017
  • Last Published: 2019-05-22 : 2:52 PM