Date Viewtool

The Date Velocity Viewtool provides methods to manipulate and display dates and times in Velocity.

The following example shows how the Date Viewtool is mapped in the toolbox.xml file:

    <tool>
        <key>date</key>
        <scope>request</scope>
        <class>org.apache.velocity.tools.generic.DateTool</class>
    </tool>

The DateTool makes it easy to:

• Retrieve the current date
• Format date objects as Strings
• Parse Strings into date objects

Date Formats

The DateTool uses the Java SimpleDateFormat. When converting between date objects and Strings, you may specify the format using following symbols in the format string:

Examples

Properties and Methods

The following are some commonly used DateTool properties and methods:

In addition, the DateTool supports many additional properties and methods; for a detailed list of DateTool methods, please see the DateTool Javadocs.

Parsing Date Strings

You can extract date objects from date strings using the toDate method, and supplying the appropriate format string, as in the following examples:

#set( $dateObj = $date.toDate( "yyyy-M-d H:m:s",           "2003-10-19 21:54:50") )
#set( $dateObj = $date.toDate( "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'", "2016-05-06T20:42:26Z") )

Adding and Subtracting Dates

Example {AddSubtractExample}

The following example code retrieves a calendar object and adds 24 hours to the time of the object:

<p>Original Date: $date</p>

## Get a Java Calendar Object
#set( $x = $date.calendar )

## Add 24 hours (int code 10)
$x.add( 10, 24 )

## Display the result
<p>New Date :${esc.d}x.time</p>

Multilingual Dates and Times

By default, the date tool will display all date and time related names using the default language, regardless of the language of the page or content where the DateTool is being called from. However you may set the locale used by the DateTool using Velocity, and then specify the locale to use when calling the DateTool methods.

The following example code demonstrates how to call DateTool methods using the language currently set for the page or content where the DateTool is being used:

## Get and display the month and day of week using the default language:
#set( $defaultLocale = $date.getLocale() )
<p>Default Locale (${defaultLocale.language}-${defaultLocale.country}): $date.format("MMMM E", $date.getDate(), $defaultLocale)</p>

## Get the user's currently selected dotCMS language and construct the code for it:
#set( $language = $globalvars.getLanguage( $request.getSession().getAttribute('com.dotmarketing.htmlpage.language') ) )
#set( $languageCode = "$language.getLanguageCode()" )
#set( $countryCode = "$language.getCountryCode()" )
#set( $finalLangCode = "${languageCode}-${countryCode}" )

## Get the locale and display the month and day of week using the user's currently selected language:
#set( $locale = $defaultLocale.forLanguageTag( $languageCode ) )
<p>Current Language (${locale.language}-${locale.country}): $date.format("MMMM E", $date.getDate(), $locale)</p>

## Display time in UTC, regardless of locale:
#set( $defaultLocale = $date.getLocale() )
#set( $outTimeZone = $date.getTimeZone().getTimeZone('UTC') )
#set( $myDate = $date.getDate() )
<p>UTC time: ${date.format("yyyy-M-d H:m:s", $myDate, $defaultLocale, $outTimeZone)}</p>

Java Calendar Constants

Here are the calendar constants - these are used with a java calendar in order to add/subtract and manipulate a date by a particular dimension: