Date Format
With NimbleText you can format date times in any way you wish, using a mask to specify your desired format.
♦ This feature is only available in the Desktop version. (Compare versions).
This functionality is provided by Steven Levithan's excellent Date-time format library.
For example if the input data said:
2013-05-14
...then you could specify a very custom format, like so:
<% $0.dateFormat('ddd, ddS mmm yyyy.') %>
And the output would be:
Tue, 14th May 2013.
Here's a description of all the mask specifiers you can use for formatting a date.
Mask | Description | |
---|---|---|
Day | d | Day of the month as digits; no leading zero for single-digit days. |
dd | Day of the month as digits; leading zero for single-digit days. | |
ddd | Day of the week as a three-letter abbreviation. | |
dddd | Day of the week as its full name. | |
Month | m | Month as digits; no leading zero for single-digit months. |
mm | Month as digits; leading zero for single-digit months. | |
mmm | Month as a three-letter abbreviation. | |
mmmm | Month as its full name. | |
Year | yy | Year as last two digits; leading zero for years less than 10. |
yyyy | Year represented by four digits. | |
Hour | h | Hours; no leading zero for single-digit hours (12-hour clock). |
hh | Hours; leading zero for single-digit hours (12-hour clock). | |
H | Hours; no leading zero for single-digit hours (24-hour clock). | |
HH | Hours; leading zero for single-digit hours (24-hour clock). | |
Minutes | M | Minutes; no leading zero for single-digit minutes. |
MM | Minutes; leading zero for single-digit minutes. | |
Seconds | s | Seconds; no leading zero for single-digit seconds. |
ss | Seconds; leading zero for single-digit seconds. | |
Milliseconds | l | Milliseconds to 3 digits. |
L | Milliseconds to 2 digits. | |
AM/PM | t | Lowercase, single-character time marker string: a or p. |
tt | Lowercase, two-character time marker string: am or pm. | |
T | Uppercase, single-character time marker string: A or P. | |
TT | Uppercase, two-character time marker string: AM or PM. | |
Timezone | Z | US timezone abbreviation, e.g. EST or MDT. With non-US timezones or in the Opera browser, the GMT/UTC offset is returned, e.g. GMT-0500. |
o | GMT/UTC timezone offset, e.g. -0500 or +0230. | |
UTC: | Must be the first four characters of the mask. Converts the date from local time to UTC/GMT/Zulu time before applying the mask. The "UTC:" prefix is removed. | |
Other | S | The date's ordinal suffix (st, nd, rd, or th). Works well with d. |
'…' or "…" | Literal character sequence. Surrounding quotes are removed. |
There are also some named masks that you can use. These are not currently configurable. If you'd like to be able to edit the defined masks used by these masks, it can be included in a future version of NimbleText. You need only ask.
Name | Mask | Example |
---|---|---|
default | ddd mmm dd yyyy HH:MM:ss | Sat Jun 09 2007 17:46:21 |
shortDate | m/d/yy | 6/9/07 |
mediumDate | mmm d, yyyy | Jun 9, 2007 |
longDate | mmmm d, yyyy | June 9, 2007 |
fullDate | dddd, mmmm d, yyyy | Saturday, June 9, 2007 |
shortTime | h:MM TT | 5:46 PM |
mediumTime | h:MM:ss TT | 5:46:21 PM |
longTime | h:MM:ss TT Z | 5:46:21 PM EST |
isoDate | yyyy-mm-dd | 2007-06-09 |
isoTime | HH:MM:ss | 17:46:21 |
isoDateTime | yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:MM:ss | 2007-06-09T17:46:21 |
isoUtcDateTime | UTC:yyyy-mm-dd'T'HH:MM:ss'Z' | 2007-06-09T22:46:21Z |
The documentation above is based on the original JavaScript Date Format Documentation from Steven Levithan.
Steven is also the author of the cross-browser split function which is used by NimbleText. He co-authored O'Reilly's Regular Expressions Cookbook (now in its second edition) so I think you should go and buy that.

xkcd/1179 (also see Doeke Zanstra's live clock based on this XKCD cartoon, and xkcd/now)
Further help
You can also get general help, help on all the symbols and keywords, or on the built-in functions, filtering with a where clause, help with the powerful command-line automation, or applying custom formats to your dates and times.
- General help
- Symbols and Keywords
- Built-in Functions
- The 'Where' clause
- Date Time formatting
- Command-Line Automation
- SQL Master Class
- HTML Master Class
- Popular Text Manipulations Made Easy «« bookmark this one
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