JavaScripts methodes for formating datetimes are quite versatile, but do come with some issues. While they do make localization a breaze, they also make writing your own format difficult. This code is useful for projects where localization is not important. It makes writing your own format easy, but localization hard.
DateTimeFormat uses a string format to create an output string from a date. This format consists of "%" followed by one or more charicture, which represent diffrent parts of a date-time. To see a list of these see below.
- %Y = Full year (usually four digit)
- %y = two digit year
- %Mn = The month as a two digit number
- %mn = The month as a number
- %Mt = The month's name
- %mt = The month's abbreviated name
- %D = The day of the month as a two digit number
- %d = The day of the month as a number
- %H = The hour of the day as a two digit number
- %h = The hour of the day as a number
- %M = The minute of the hour as a two digit number
- %m = The minute of the hour as a number
- %S = The second of the minute as a two digit number
- %s = The second of the minute as a number
- %Z = The name of the timezone
- %z = The abbreviated name of the timezone
- %zn = The timezone as a number (i.e. -0500 for Eastern Standared Time)
- %E = The name of the era
- %e = The abbreviated name of the era
- %W = The name of the day of the week
- %w = The abbreviated name of the day of the week
- %% = just "%"
- %- = just "%"
- %. = Nothing. Useful if you want the minute of the hour followed by an "n" formated as "%M%.n". without "%." it would simply give the month.
test.html is a simple html program which uses DateTimeFormat. It simply takes a format inputed by the user and outputs the current datetime in that format. It is useful for testing a format and as an example implementation.
To use DateTimeFormat you can simply add dateTimeFormat.js into a web-based project. Then it can be "imported" into an html document by adding <script src="{PathToDateTimeFormat.js}"></script>. This will give all JavaScript on that document access to two things: dateTimeFormat - a function, and dateTimeFormater - a class.
The function dateTimeFormat takes two required arguments: "format" and "date". dateTimeFormat will format "date" (a JavaScript "Date" object) to "format". It can also be passed a local string.
dateTimeFormat("%Y/%M/%D",new Date());
The constructor of dateTimeFormater takes one required argument: "format" and one optional argument "local". Once initialized, the "format" function of a dateTimeFormater can be called with a JavaScript "Date" object as an argument, and the formated datetime will be returned.
dTF = new dateTimeFormater("%Y/%M/%D");
dTF.format(new Date())