Parse and Format Date Function Calls
Introduction
This document describes functions that are used to parse Date and time values from strings using a specified pattern, or to produce a string from a Date and time value.
The following pattern letters can be used to parse and format Date and time values:
| Letter | Date or Time Component | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| M | Month in year (context sensitive) | November; Nov; 11 |
| L | Month in year (standalone) | November; Nov; 11 |
| y | Year | 2001; 01 |
| G | Era designator | AD |
| E | Day name in week | Tuesday; Tue |
| u | Day of week (1 = Monday, …, 7 = Sunday) | 5 |
| Y | Week year | 2009; 09 |
| w | Week in year | 11 |
| W | Week in month | 2 |
| D | Day in year | 133 |
| d | Day in month | 7 |
| F | Day of week in month | 1 |
| a | Am/pm marker | PM |
| H | Hour in day (0-23) | 0 |
| k | Hour in day (1-24) | 24 |
| K | Hour in am/pm (0-11) | 0 |
| h | Hour in am/pm (1-12) | 12 |
| m | Minute in hour | 24 |
| s | Second in minute | 50 |
| S | Millisecond | 201 |
In microflows, both pattern letters M and L are supported and work completely as expected.
However, in nanoflows, the pattern letter M usually should NOT be used, given that it is not properly supported in nanoflows currently. One exception is that you can use MM since it gives a numerical representation of a month name.
In nanoflows, the pattern letter L works properly except when it is used for some languages where the month name changes depending on the context (languages with the genitive case). For those languages, Mendix recommends that the character limit is LL, given that with more characters (for instance, LLL or LLLL), the pattern letter L might not work properly. For example, LLL does work for Russian but not for Catalan. LLLL is not recommended for any of those languages.
Here is a full collection of such languages that are available in Studio Pro: Armenian, Belarusian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Finnish, Greek, Lithuanian, Polish, Russian, Slovak, and Ukrainian.
The following pattern letters are only available for microflows:
| Letter | Date or Time Component | Examples |
|---|---|---|
| z | Time zone | Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00 |
| Z | Time zone | -0800 |
| X | Time zone | -08; -0800; -08:00 |
parseDateTimeUTC) in client-side expressions if you want to assign the output to (or compare the output with) an attribute of type Date and time where Localize is disabled. In the client, the localization functionality is built into the attribute type itself, and using UTC functions causes the time zone conversion to be handled twice.
parseDateTime[UTC]
Takes a string and parses it. If it fails and a default value is specified, it returns the default value. Otherwise, an error occurs. The function parseDateTime uses the user’s time zone and parseDateTimeUTC uses the UTC calendar.
When using yy date format in microflows, the century guessing by proximity follows the rule of 80/20. Specifically, it adjusts dates to be within 80 years before and 20 years after the time the date format instance is created:
252025681968
When using it in nanoflows, it follows the rule of 50/50:
252025881988
Input Parameters
The input parameters are described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| Date | A string which contains the textual representation of a date — for example dd/MM/yyyy or MM/dd/yyyy |
| Format | String |
| Default value (optional) | Date and time |
Output
The output is described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| The parsed date or the default value if a date could not be parsed. | Date and time |
If the Date string is date-like, but not a valid date, the function will be able to parse it and will return a valid Date and time value.
For example parseDateTime('35-11-2015', 'dd-MM-yyyy', dateTime(2015)) will return 05 December 2015 12:00 AM.
Example
The examples below illustrate which value the expression returns:
-
If you use the following input:
parseDateTime('2022-04-30T22:00:00.000', 'yyyy-MM-dd''T''HH:mm:ss.SSS')the output is:
Apr 30 2022 22:00:00The time will be 00:00, if it is not specified.
-
If you use the following input:
parseDateTime('noDateTime', 'dd-MM-yyyy', dateTime(2007))the output is:
Mon Jan 01 00:00:00 CET 2007
formatDateTime[UTC]
Converts the Date and time value to a string, formatted according to the format parameter. Without the format parameter, a standard format is used, which depends on the Java version and user locale. The function formatDateTime uses the users calendar and formatDateTimeUTC uses the UTC calendar.
Input Parameters
The input parameters are described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| Date | Date and time |
| Format (optional) | String |
Output
The output is described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| A formatted representation of the Date and time value. | String |
Example
If you use the following input:
formatDateTime($object/Date1,'EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss Z')
the output is:
'Sun, 8 Jun 2008 10:12:01 +0200'
To get a format like '2008-06-08T10:12:01', you need to concatenate two formatDateTime[UTC] functions:
formatDateTime($object/Date1,'yyyy-MM-dd') + 'T' + formatDateTime($object/Date1,'HH:mm:ss')
formatTime[UTC]
Converts the time part of Date and time value to a string in a standard format, which depends on the Java version and user locale. formatTime uses the users calendar and formatTimeUTC uses the UTC calendar.
Input Parameters
The input parameters are described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| Date | Date and time |
Output
The output is described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| A formatted representation of the time part of the Date and time value. | String |
Example
If you use the following input:
formatTime(dateTime(1974, 7, 2, 9, 50, 10))
the output is:
'9:50 AM'
formatDate[UTC]
Converts the date part of Date and time value to a string in a standard format, which depends on the Java version and user locale. formatDate uses the users calendar and formatDateUTC uses the UTC calendar.
Input Parameters
The input parameters are described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| Date | Date and time |
Output
The output is described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| A formatted representation of the date part of the Date and time value. | String |
Example
If you use the following input:
formatDate(dateTime(1974, 7, 2, 9, 50, 10))
the output is:
'7/2/74'
dateTimeToEpoch
Returns the number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT to the date.
Input Parameters
The input parameters are described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| Date | Date and time |
Output
The output is described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| The number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT to the date. | Integer/Long |
Example
If you use the following input:
dateTimeToEpoch(dateTime(1974, 7, 2, 9, 50, 10))
The output is:
141990610000
epochToDateTime
Creates a Date and time that represents the specified number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT.
Input Parameters
The input parameters are described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| Epoch | Integer/Long |
Output
The output is described in the table below:
| Value | Type |
|---|---|
| A Date and time that represents the specified number of milliseconds since January 1, 1970, 00:00:00 GMT. | Date and time |
Example
If you use the following input:
epochToDateTime(141990610000)
The output is:
dateTime(1974, 7, 2, 9, 50, 10)