Date and time patterns

Dates and times in a template originating from a date field in a record set can be displayed using a custom pattern. You can enter the pattern via the Helper Wizard or the Text Script Wizard, lest the field type is set to Date in a data mapping configuration and the field contains a valid date; see Using the Helper Wizard, Using the Text Script Wizard and Formatting variable data. In the Script Editor, the pattern can be passed to a date, dateTime or Time function of the formatter; see formatter.

The custom pattern may consist of pattern letters (see below), for example: "MM/dd/yyyy". The components can be separated with a space or a symbol, e.g. ., /, -. Text must be put in quotes.

The repetition of pattern letters determines the exact presentation. For example, if the number of pattern letters for a month is less than 3 (M or MM), the month is displayed as a number. If the number of pattern letters is 3 (MMM), it will be displayed as text; if available, a short or abbreviated form of the month's name will be used. If the number of pattern letters is 4 or more (MMMM), the month's full name is displayed.

Note: The pattern letters and patterns on this page are only suitable for displaying dates and times in templates, not for extracting dates in the DataMapper module. For pattern letters and patterns available in the DataMapper, see Date.

Pattern characters

Letter	Component	Presentation	Examples
G	Era designator	Text	AD
y	Year	Year	1996; 96
Y	Week year	Year	2009; 09
M	Month in year	Month	July; Jul; 07
w	Week in year	Number	27
W	Week in month	Number	2
D	Day in year	Number	189
d	Day in month	Number	10
F	Day of week in month	Number	2
E	Day name in week	Text	Tuesday; Tue
u	Day number of week (1 = Monday, ..., 7 = Sunday)	Number	1
a	Am/pm marker	Text	PM
H	Hour in day (0-23)	Number	0
k	Hour in day (1-24)	Number	24
K	Hour in am/pm (0-11)	Number	0
h	Hour in am/pm (1-12)	Number	12
m	Minute in hour	Number	30
s	Second in minute	Number	55
S	Millisecond	Number	978
z	Time zone	General time zone	Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z	Time zone	RFC 822 time zone	-0800
X	Time zone	ISO 8601 time zone	-08; -0800; -08:00

Note: These date and time pattern letters and patterns conform to standard Java notation. For more information, see http://docs.oracle.com/javase/7/docs/api/java/text/SimpleDateFormat.html.