2022.1

Examples
Creating a Date object from a string
When you open a data file or database in the Designer, all fields are text fields (fields of the
type string). The formatter cannot be used to format a string with a particular date format. The
solution is to store the string in a variable as a Date object, and use the formatter with that
variable.
The following sample script demonstrates this solution. It splits a string into parts and then
creates a new Date object with the parts in the correct order. To construct a Date, the parts of
the date must be put in the following order:year, month, day, and optionally hours, minutes,
seconds, milliseconds (see https://www.w3schools.com/js/js_dates.asp and
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date.)
When the time is omitted, it defaults to 12:00:00 AM.
/* Convert the string 21-12-1997 into a valid JavaScript date */
var strDate = record.fields["date"];
var dateParts = strDate.split("-");
var date = new Date(dateParts[2], (dateParts[1] - 1), dateParts
[0]);
Note
JavaScript counts months from 0 to 11. January is 0. December is 11.
Another way to put a string in a Date is to use the Date.parse function; see
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_
Objects/Date/parse.
The date variable can be used as the value in the date, dateTime or time functions of the
formatter.
var myDate = formatter.date(date, "MM/dd/yyyy");
The custom pattern that the script provides, outputs the month and day in two digits each and
the year in four digits: 05/21/2016. For more examples of formatting patterns, see "Date and
time patterns" on the next page.
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