1.8

Table Of Contents
timeMedium(value)
Formats a time as medium string representation, for example 12:00:00 AM.
value
A Date object. A Date can contain a date and time.
timeShort(value)
Formats a time as short string representation, for example 12:00 AM.
value
A Date object. A Date can contain a date and time.
Examples
The following script passes the value of a field in the record set to the date() function. This will
only work if the type of the field has been set to Date in the Data Mapping Configuration and if
the field contains a valid date.
var myDate = formatter.date(records.fields.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 facing page.
Creating a Date object from a string
In a Data Mapping Configuration you can set the type of a field to Date, but when you open a
data file or database in the Designer without a Data Mapping Configuration, 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 http://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.
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