Rich UI date and time support

Rich UI supports a subset of EGL formatting capabilities for Rich UI dates, times, and timestamps; however, it does not support intervals.

Assigning a string to a date, time, or timestamp

Rich UI follows the EGL rules for assigning a string to a variable of type DATE, TIME, or TIMESTAMP. In particular, it uses the following default formats:
  • For date variables, strLib.defaultDateFormat
  • For time variables, strLib.defaultTimeFormat
  • For timestamp variables, strLib.defaultTimestampFormat
The following code assigns a string to a date field:
strLib.defaultDateFormat = "yyyy/MM/dd";
d date = "2008/04/08";
You can substitute one separator for another:
strLib.defaultDateFormat = "yyyy/MM/dd";
d date = "2008-04-08";
You can also omit the separators entirely:
strLib.defaultDateFormat = "yyyy/MM/dd";
myDate date = "20100412";

Assigning a date, time, or timestamp to a string

When you assign time-related variables to strings, remember these rules:
  • To assign a date variable to a string, use strLib.formatDate.

    In Rich UI, the following formatting symbols are valid:

    • yyyy for the 4-digit year
    • yy for the 2-digit year
    • MM for the 2-digit month
    • dd for the 2-digit day
    • Separators, such as hyphens, slashes, and blanks

    You can set the formatDate build descriptor option, which provides a default for the strLib.formatDate.

  • To assign a time variable to a string, use strLib.formatTime.
    In Rich UI, the following formatting symbols are valid:
    • HH for the 2-digit hour (0 to 23) in military time
    • hh for the 2-digit hour (1 to 12)
    • mm for the 2-digit minute in the hour
    • ss for the 2-digit second in minute
    • a for AM or PM
    • Separators, such as hyphens, slashes, and blanks

    You can set the formatTime build descriptor option, which provides a default for the strLib.formatTime.

  • To assign a timestamp to a string, use strLib.formatTimestamp.

    In Rich UI, the following formatting symbols are valid:

    • HH for the 2-digit hour (0 to 23) in military time
    • hh for the 2-digit hour (1 to 12)
    • mm for the 2-digit minute in the hour
    • ss for the 2-digit second in the minute
    • SSSSSS for a fractional second; specifically, a 3-digit millisecond followed by three zeros as a result of restrictions in JavaScript
    • a for AM or PM
    • Separators, such as hyphens, slashes, and blanks
    Note: The character for fractional seconds is S for strLib.formatTimestamp, but is f in the mask that is used at timestamp declaration.

    You can set the formatTimestamp build descriptor option, which provides a default for the strLib.formatTimestamp.

If a date is assigned directly to a string (as shown in the previous section), the string is formatted in accordance with the default format:
strLib.defaultDateFormat = "yyyy/MM/dd";
t date = "2010-04-12";
myString STRING = date;

The value of myString is "2010/04/12".


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