Date Formats

**nvisioncurtis** · 02/02/2010, 03:17

Hi All,

I would prefer to have a date that is formated like 'February 2, 2010' which I think should be the formated with the following string 'F d, Y' This however generates a general system error like so.

Code:

Fatal error: Uncaught exception Exception with message Invalid date format "F d Y" thrown in C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\system\libraries\Date.php on line 187

#0 C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\system\libraries\Widget.php(540): Date->getRegexp('F d Y')
#1 C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\system\modules\backend\TextField.php(105): Widget->validator('January 15 2010')
#2 C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\system\libraries\Widget.php(420): TextField->validator('January 15 2010')
#3 C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\system\modules\backend\DataContainer.php(251): Widget->validate()
#4 C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\system\drivers\DC_Table.php(1473): DataContainer->row()
#5 C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\system\modules\backend\Backend.php(208): DC_Table->edit()
#6 C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\typolight\main.php(99): Backend->getBackendModule('news')
#7 C:\xampp\htdocs\abmac-tl\typolight\main.php(294): Main->run()
#8 {main}

My config is
$GLOBALS['TL_CONFIG']['dateFormat'] = 'F d, Y';
$GLOBALS['TL_CONFIG']['datimFormat'] = 'F d, Y';

Whats the correct formating string?

**Medianomaly** · 02/02/2010, 06:24

Yes! We ran into the same issue over here a couple of weeks ago on a site we were doing.

I did find this post on the old forums: http://www.typolight.org/forum/message/1559.html. Unfortunately there was no explanation or solution given, just a bunch of people basically acknowledging that the problem exists.

The best I can gather is that the global date format you define in settings has to be numeric only -- not sure what the technical reasons are and would welcome any insight.

Unfortunately I don't have access to the code (it was on a friend's Dev server), but I THINK we solved it by going into the news template and specifying the date like the following:

Code:

<?php echo date("F j, Y", $this->time); ?>

In our case we used "j" because that one doesn't add the leading 0 to single-digit days.

**nvisioncurtis** · 02/02/2010, 17:18

Hey that worked beautifully!

So restated you can override the system date format with a custom format.

Copy and edit the appropriate News template and swapped out
the date code

Code:

<?php  echo $this->date;  ?>

with

Code:

<?php echo date("F j, Y", $this->time); ?>

**Medianomaly** · 02/03/2010, 01:20

Correct -- that will work, specifically for news items. (Common tripping point we ran into -- $this->date is what news uses by default to show date & time. We tried it with that first, but it broke -- I guess because of how it's formatted. So we tried $this->time instead, and that did the trick).

Events have different variables, and I don't know about anything else.

But when in doubt, you can drop this into any template:

Code:

<?php echo '<pre>'; $this->showTemplateVars(); echo '</pre>'; ?>

And when you refresh it will show you all the available template variables, so a few minutes of trial and error will get you the one you need.

**nvisioncurtis** · 02/03/2010, 21:19

Thats good to know! Thanks again.

**Ben** · 02/05/2010, 07:59

TYPOlight prefers numeric date formats for the backend, which are set in System > Settings. From Layout > Site structure, you can define frontend date, time, and date + time formatting by editing your website root. This is one of many reasons why it's good to use a website root and place all pages beneath it.