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Template-Toolkit-2.00
River stage three • 561 direct dependents • 959 total dependents
146 ++
/ Template::Plugin::Date

NAME

Template::Plugin::Date - generate formatted date strings

SYNOPSIS

    [% USE date %]

    # use current time and default format
    [% date.format %]

    # specify time as seconds since epoch or 'h:m:s d-m-y' string
    [% date.format(960973980) %]
    [% date.format('4:20:36 21/12/2000') %]

    # specify format
    [% date.format(mytime, '%H:%M:%S') %]

    # specify locale
    [% date.format(date.now, '%a %d %b %y', 'en_GB') %]

    # named parameters 
    [% date.format(mytime, format = '%H:%M:%S') %]
    [% date.format(locale = 'en_GB') %]
    [% date.format(time   = date.now, 
                   format = '%H:%M:%S', 
                   locale = 'en_GB) %]
   
    # specify default format to plugin
    [% USE date(format = '%H:%M:%S', locale = 'de_DE') %]

    [% date.format %]
    ...

DESCRIPTION

The Date plugin provides an easy way to generate formatted time and date strings by delegating to the POSIX strftime() routine.

The plugin can be loaded via the familiar USE directive.

    [% USE date %]

This creates a plugin object with the default name of 'date'. An alternate name can be specified as such:

    [% USE myname = date %]

The plugin provides the format() method which accepts a time value, a format string and a locale name. All of these parameters are optional with the current system time, default format ('%H:%M:%S %d-%b-%Y') and current locale being used respectively, if undefined. Default values for the time, format and/or locale may be specified as named parameters in the USE directive.

    [% USE date(format = '%a %d-%b-%Y', locale = 'fr_FR') %]

When called without any parameters, the format() method returns a string representing the current system time, formatted by strftime() according to the default format and for the default locale (which may not be the current one, if locale is set in the USE directive).

    [% date.format %]

The plugin allows a time/date to be specified as seconds since the epoch, as is returned by time().

    File last modified: [% date.format(filemod_time) %]

The time/date can also be specified as a string of the form 'h:m:s d/m/y'. Any of the characters : / - or space may be used to delimit fields.

    [% USE day = date(format => '%A', locale => 'en_GB') %]
    [% day.format('4:20:00 9-13-2000') %]

Output:

    Tuesday

A format string can also be passed to the format() method, and a locale specification may follow that.

    [% date.format(filemod, '%d-%b-%Y') %]
    [% date.format(filemod, '%d-%b-%Y', 'en_GB') %]

Any or all of these parameters may be named. Positional parameters should always be in the order ($time, $format, $locale).

    [% date.format(format => '%H:%M:%S') %]
    [% date.format(time => filemod, format => '%H:%M:%S') %]
    [% date.format(mytime, format => '%H:%M:%S') %]
    [% date.format(mytime, format => '%H:%M:%S', locale => 'fr_FR') %]
    ...etc...

The now() method returns the current system time in seconds since the epoch.

    [% date.format(date.now, '%A') %]

AUTHORS

Thierry-Michel Barral <kktos@electron-libre.com> wrote the original plugin.

Andy Wardley <abw@cre.canon.co.uk> provided some minor fixups/enhancements, a test script and documentation.

REVISION

$Revision: 2.1 $

COPYRIGHT

Copyright (C) 2000 Thierry-Michel Barral, Andy Wardley.

This module is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself.

SEE ALSO

Template::Plugin, POSIX