nav[aria-label="Primary Navigation"] { padding: 0; & ul { list-style: none; width: 100%; display: flex; flex-direction: row; justify-content: start; align-items: start; gap: 30px; padding: 0; & li { margin: 0; } & ul li { list-style: none; } } }

dct to multiple date formats

nico

I have a requirement where my business users want to select a date within a dct and have it display in different ways depending on the presentation template.

for example:
tpl one would display JAN 12, 2012.
tpl two would display as January 12, 2012
tpl three would display as Wednesday January 12, 2012

What is your strategy meeting this type of request from both the dct and tpl perspective?

Many thanks.

TS 672 sp2 win

Find more posts tagged with

Comments

Adam Stoller

I have a requirement where my business users want to select a date within a dct and have it display in different ways depending on the presentation template.

for example:
tpl one would display JAN 12, 2012.
tpl two would display as January 12, 2012
tpl three would display as Wednesday January 12, 2012

What is your strategy meeting this type of request from both the dct and tpl perspective?

Many thanks.

TS 672 sp2 win

From the DCT I would have either a radio-button or select-list item for the user to select the date format.
From the PT I would look at the value of that item in the DCT and format the date accordingly.

Bowker

To add to Fish's response, the date entered into the DCR should be in one standard format. Which format really doesn't matter, just as long as it's consistent.

For formatting the output you have a number of choices. Here are just a few.

One is, as Fish has said, add another field in the DCR that the Presentation Template will interpret and format the date accordingly. That will force the date format on the presentation at the time you enter the data/content. This may not be desirable or possible.

An other would use some outside parameter to correctly format the date. For example if you want the date to appear as July 2, 2012 on your US site and 2 July 2012 on your European site, you will have to have a smart presentation template which knows which site you are on to correctly format the date.

Or If you have some form of "data collection" where multiple DCRs are used on one presentation, then whatever "cobbles" or specifies which pieces of data to use could also indicate the date format.

Another option would be to do the date formatting in Java Script which senses the browser's configuration for dates and correctly displays the date in the "native" format. You may be able to do this on the server side, but then you run into caching issues since you can't cache the date since every client would potentially have a different format desire.

claudiag

Do you already have three separate DCTs for some other reason? If not, I wouldn't split them out based on something as simple as a date.

I'd go with a calendar dropdown widget like JQuery Datepicker, and use a radio button to select the output format. Something like this:


Select a format:
o YYYY/MM/DD      o Month Day Year      o etc

Date:
|________| [imagine a little calendar icon here]

On the other end, I'd offload the formatting to the webservers. If the business ever changes its mind on the way the dates are formatted, having it hardcoded in the output is going to be a pain in your... well, it'll be a pain. You'll have to regenerate everything.

Rather, I'd pass the format radio value selected by the user to the front end, and use javascript (or whatever you're using on that end) to format the date.

Rick Poulin

I have a requirement where my business users want to select a date within a dct and have it display in different ways depending on the presentation template.

Methinks you all missed out on the fact that the above requirement implies that the PT controls the date format, not the user. Thus, have a single field in your DCT that *requires* the user to input the date in one easily-parsable specific format of your choice, e.g. yyyy/MM/dd. Then, in your PT, you can use the language's date formatting modules and/or templates to parse the date and output it in whatever format the PT requires. Easiest in PERL, but there are ways in XSL/Java PTs.

nico

No I have not began coding yet, I wanted to get a sense of good options out there and then make and educated decision. I'm glad you mention going with a datepicker, i've combed devnet for discussions and have read a few it seems a callout to the js is the way to go, how easy is it to do that? I'm not sure and the 6.7.2 dev manual documentation on this is not ideal in my opinion.

Do you already have three separate DCTs for some other reason? If not, I wouldn't split them out based on something as simple as a date.

I'd go with a calendar dropdown widget like JQuery Datepicker, and use a radio button to select the output format. Something like this:
Select a format:
o YYYY/MM/DD      o Month Day Year      o etc

Date:
|________| [imagine a little calendar icon here]
On the other end, I'd offload the formatting to the webservers. If the business ever changes its mind on the way the dates are formatted, having it hardcoded in the output is going to be a pain in your... well, it'll be a pain. You'll have to regenerate everything.

Rather, I'd pass the format radio value selected by the user to the front end, and use javascript (or whatever you're using on that end) to format the date.

nico

I could go either way on this but I would guess the fewer choices/options the business user has in a dct the better the UX. That being said the option is a good fallback.

I really like your scenario stated below, my initial assumption was value is captured in dct in some way (date picker?) then that value is displayed by some JS rule. After think about this though it would be nice to use PERL to do this without the client side dependency (I'd rather stay away from XSL and JAVA).

Methinks you all missed out on the fact that the above requirement implies that the PT controls the date format, not the user. Thus, have a single field in your DCT that *requires* the user to input the date in one easily-parsable specific format of your choice, e.g. yyyy/MM/dd. Then, in your PT, you can use the language's date formatting modules and/or templates to parse the date and output it in whatever format the PT requires. Easiest in PERL, but there are ways in XSL/Java PTs.

ISCBorisB

...it would be nice to use PERL...

Run perldoc on Date::Manip Package if you want to follow this route