FORMAT_DATE

Format a date using the php date() function

Valid Format characters include:

d - The day of the month (from 01 to 31) - 03
D - A textual representation of a day (three letters) - Tue
j - The day of the month without leading zeros (1 to 31) - 3
l (lowercase 'L') - A full textual representation of a day - Tuesday
N - The ISO-8601 numeric representation of a day (1 for Monday, 7 for Sunday) - 2
S - The English ordinal suffix for the day of the month (2 characters st, nd, rd or th. Works well with j) - rd
w - A numeric representation of the day (0 for Sunday, 6 for Saturday) - 2
z - The day of the year (from 0 through 365) - 337
W - The ISO-8601 week number of year (weeks starting on Monday) - 49
F - A full textual representation of a month (January through December) - December
m - A numeric representation of a month (from 01 to 12) - 12
M - A short textual representation of a month (three letters) - Dec
n - A numeric representation of a month, without leading zeros (1 to 12) - 12
t - The number of days in the given month - 31
L - Whether it's a leap year (1 if it is a leap year, 0 otherwise) - 1
o - The ISO-8601 year number - 2024
Y - A four digit representation of a year - 2024
y - A two digit representation of a year - 24
a - Lowercase am or pm - pm
A - Uppercase AM or PM - PM
B - Swatch Internet time (000 to 999) - 785
g - 12-hour format of an hour (1 to 12) - 5
G - 24-hour format of an hour (0 to 23) - 17
h - 12-hour format of an hour (01 to 12) - 05
H - 24-hour format of an hour (00 to 23) - 17
i - Minutes with leading zeros (00 to 59) - 50
s - Seconds, with leading zeros (00 to 59) - 36
u - Microseconds - 000000
e - The timezone identifier (Examples: UTC, GMT, Atlantic/Azores) - UTC
I (capital i) - Whether the date is in daylights savings time (1 if Daylight Savings Time, 0 otherwise) - 0
O - Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours (Example: +0100) - +0000
P - Difference to Greenwich time (GMT) in hours:minutes - +00:00
T - Timezone abbreviations (Examples: EST, MDT) - UTC
Z - Timezone offset in seconds. The offset for timezones west of UTC is negative (-43200 to 50400) - 0
c - The ISO-8601 date (e.g. 2013-05-05T16:34:42+00:00) - 2024-12-03T17:50:36+00:00
r - The RFC 2822 formatted date (e.g. Fri, 12 Apr 2013 12:01:05 +0200) - Tue, 03 Dec 2024 17:50:36 +0000
U - The seconds since the Unix Epoch (January 1 1970 00:00:00 GMT) - 1733248236

See php.net/manual/en/function.date.php for more details.

If you pass in an empty date value then this function will use today's date.
If you pass in an X then it will return nothing.
This can be useful when formating a date from an XML field by setting the default value of the OBJ_DATA command to X.

Number	Name	Default	Type	Description
1	format	d/m/Y H:i:s	String	Format. For a full date and time use, jS F Y H:i:s
2	date	Current date/time as a Unix time stamp	String	The date to format.
3	date_format	-1	Integer	The format of the submitted date, as defined below. Unix timestamp. This is the default format for an Object or Relationship Amended Date YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SSZ DD/MM/YYYY HH:MM:SS This is the default format of a date held on an object. MM/DD/YYYY HH:MM:SS YYYYMMDD Hours, minutes and seconds are optional (00:00:00 will be used if not submitted) and seconds can be decimal.
4	adjustment		String	The amount (represented as a string) to adjust the date by. e.g. 1 second, 2 minutes, 3 hours, 4 days, 5 months or 6 years Prefixing a - will cause the interval to be subtracted from the date. Some other possible adjustments:- first day of this month last day of this month
-	language	en	String	The language to translate the date to. The Language needs to be setup in the Organisation/Site Content/Language list and the Day and Month translations need to be included.

{FORMAT_DATE(l j F Y, {"language":"fr"})}

mardi 3 décembre 2024

Relative Dates Example

Code
Result

Today: {FORMAT_DATE(d/m/Y)}<br />
This Working Week: {FORMAT_DATE(d/m/Y, monday this week, 0)} - {FORMAT_DATE(d/m/Y, friday this week, 0)}<br />
This Month: {FORMAT_DATE(d/m/Y, first day of this month, 0)} - {FORMAT_DATE(d/m/Y, last day of this month, 0)}

Today: 03/12/2024
This Working Week: 02/12/2024 - 06/12/2024
This Month: 01/12/2024 - 31/12/2024

Today Example

This includes the time zone offset adjustment for London accounting for Daylight Saving as the time on the server is UTC.

Code
Result

{FORMAT_DATE(,,,{TIMEZONE_OFFSET(Europe/London)})}<br />
{FORMAT_DATE(jS M Y,,,{TIMEZONE_OFFSET(Europe/London)})}

03/12/2024 17:50:36
3rd Dec 2024

to add a Comment.

DATE/TIME Commands

AGE
CALENDAR
STEALTH_MODE
TIMEZONE
TIMEZONE_OFFSET

DISPLAY Commands

ACCORDION
AJAX_EMBED
BASIC_DISP
BLINK
CALENDAR
COMMA
COMMENT
DQUOTE
EDITABLE
FAVICON
FIRST_LINE
GLINK
GLINK_OFF
GLINK_ON
HTML_SPECIAL_CHARS
HTML_TO_TEXT
IMPORT_FORM
LCASE
MAIN_PAGE
NALB
NOTIFY
OBJ_COLOR
PAGE_JS
PAGE_JS2
PAGE_TITLE
PANEL
PANEL_CLOSED
PANEL_OPEN
PILLS
PLURAL
PRINT_BUTTON
QR_CODE
REGISTER
REG_REP
RENDER_TREE
RETURN_TIDY
SEQN
SET_PAGE_TITLE
SIDEBAR_LEFT/RIGHT
SLIDES
SYMBOL
TRACKING_IMAGE
TRIM
WRAP