Custom Date Formats

Introduction

This page explains the symbols used in custom date formats and other rules that affect the use of custom date formats. Date formats are set via the Dates section.

Second Site includes multiple properties that are lists of date formats. The user can select one of the available formats. The formats use a particular syntax to express formatting rules for the parts of a date. The date formats look similar to custom date formats in other programs such as Microsoft Excel. The date formatter supports a few dozen symbols such as "d", "mmm", "yyyy", etc., to express how the user wants to format a date subfield. The sequence of the symbols and delimeters determines the sequence of those elements in the output date.

In order to keep the user interface simple, Second Site presents a list of date formats. Some users may desire date formats that are not in the list. Those users can add their choices to the list by editing the 2ndsite.ini file.

Symbol Sequence

Second Site does not support all the possible sequences of the available symbols. Every format must begin with one of the "date modifier word" symbols "Aaa", "aaa", "AAA", "Aaaa", "aaaa", or "AAAA". The supported sequences are as follows:

Literal Characters

Custom date formats support literal characters mixed with the date part symbols. This capability is typically used to provide punctuation characters such as spaces, commas, slashes, dashes, and parentheses.

TMG and Second Site include support for partial dates, i.e. dates that include a month and year only, or a year only, rather than a day, month, and year. When a date part is missing, Second Site has to guess whether or not to include the literal characters that precede or follow the date part symbol for which there is no value. If the default processing does not produce the desired results, try using the [] and {} symbols to make explicit prefixes and suffixes.

Date Part Symbols

Here are the available symbols and what they mean.

Date Modifier Words

Days

Month Numbers

Month Names

Year Numbers

The mixed-case symbols Aaa, Aaaa, Mmm, and Mmmm don't necessarily return mixed case results. The symbol returns the value of the associated String property. The value may or may not start with a capital letter. By default, the English versions of the date modifier word strings (see the Date Strings 2 section) are lowercase, e.g., "before". The English versions of the month names (see the Date Strings 3 section) are mixed case, e.g., "January".

Special Characters

Examples