toDate: Convert a string to a Date

NimbleText enhances javascript's Date handling capabilities by adding a way to format dates (the format function, see Date Format) and also a way to parse strings into dates: the toDate function.

For example, given the string:

01 Jan 2020

You can turn it into a Date object, like so:

<% $0.toDate('dd n yyyy') %>

The difficult bit is crafting the mask that identifies the date format you are parsing.

Here are some examples

Examples

Input	Pattern	Result
`01 Jan 2020`	`<% '$0'.toDate('dd n yyyy') %>`	`Wed Jan 01 2020 00:00:00`
`12/06/31`	`<% '$0'.toDate("dd/MM/yy") %>`	`Fri Jun 12 1931 00:00:00`
`17 Feb 2021`	`<% '$0'.toDate("dd n y") %>`	`Wed Feb 17 2021 00:00:00`
`17 February 2021`	`<% '$0'.toDate("dd N y") %>`	`Wed Feb 17 2021 00:00:00`
`2023-06-21 23:12`	`<% '$0'.toDate("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm") %>`	`Wed Jun 21 2023 23:12:00`
`01 Feb 2021 11am`	`<% '$0'.toDate("dd nnn yyyy haa") %>`	`Mon Feb 01 2021 11:00:00`
`01 Feb 2021 11pm`	`<% '$0'.toDate("dd nnn yyyy haa") %>`	`Mon Feb 01 2021 23:00:00`
`01 Feb 2021 11:23:21.555`	`<% '$0'.toDate("dd nnn yyyy HH:mm:s.S").getMilliseconds() %>`	`555`

Characters

Character	Meaning	Examples
Y	Full year	2021
y	2 digit year	21
M	Month number	01
n	Month short name	Jan
N	Month (full name)	January
d	Date	??
m	minutes	57
H	Hours (24 hour time)	21
h	hours (12 hour time)	9
s	Seconds	52
S	Milliseconds	123
a	Meridian (AM or PM)	AM, PM
w	Weekday (short names)	Mon, Tue
W	Weekday (full names)	Monday, Tuesday
z	Timezone offset	...