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 Cartoon about ISO 8601

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.

You need to purchase a license to unlock all the features in NimbleText.

If you haven't downloaded NimbleText yet, then for added power, privacy and versatility I sincerely think you should download it now.

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