date

See also

date_range, datediff, timesince, now

Formats a date or datetime according to the format specified in the argument.

The date should be a tuple {Y,M,D} and the datetime should be a tuple {{Y,M,D},{H,I,S}}. Dates and datetimes are always assumed to be in local time.

An example:

{{ mydate|date:"Y-m-d" }}

If mydate is {2009,6,1} this returns 2009-06-01 as output.

To show the year of the current date:

{{ now|date:"Y" }}

See also the timesince filter to display a human readable relative time like 10 hours ago.

Timezones

Dates in Zotonic are stored in UTC. If a date is displayed then it is converted to the timezone of the current request context. This timezone can be one of the following, in order of preference:

• Preferred timezone set by the user

• Timezone of the user-agent

• Default timezone of the site

• Default timezone of the Zotonic server

• UTC

A specific timezone can be enforced by adding a second parameter to the date-filter. For example, to display a date in UTC:

{{ mydate|date:"Y-m-d H:i T":"UTC" }}

Instead of the timezone, the following arguments are also accepted:

• true set the timezone to UTC

• false leave the timezone as is

• undefined leave the timezone as is

• a resource id (integer), set the timezone according to the tz property of the resource

Timezone and all day date ranges

If a resource’s date range is set with the date_is_all_day flag then the dates are not converted to or from UTC but stored as-is. This needs to be taken into account when displaying those dates, otherwise a conversion from (assumed) UTC to the current timezone is performed and the wrong date might be displayed.

The timezone conversion can be prevented by adding the date_is_all_day flag to the date-filter as the timezone. Example, for displaying the start date of a resource:

{{ id.date_start|date:"Y-m-d":id.date_is_all_day }}

An alternative is to display the “all day” date in the timezone of the resource itself:

\{\{ id.date_start|date:”Y-m-d”:id \}\}

Date formatting characters

Date uses the same format as PHP’s date function with some extensions and some omissions.

All supported formatting characters are listed below:

To construct a date in a template, the filter also accepts Erlang lists as input, so the following will work:

{{ [1990,10,10]|date:"j F Y" }}

Will output 10 October 1990. This also works with datetimes:

{{ [[1990,10,10],[10,11,12]]|date:"j F Y - H:i:s" }}

Will output 10 October 1990 - 10:11:12.