Report Editor - Formatting Date and Time Help

You can change output format for following controls, if they represents a date, date time, or time data:

• Field Control

• Expression Field

• Date Field
• DateTime Field
• Time Field

For Date, Time or DateTime data, you can choose one of the common date/time formats using the kind property of a control:

• Auto – defines auto format for the current control.
• DateFull – defines the full format of the date, that contains the most widely description of the date.
• DateLong – defines the long format of the date, that contains more widely description then medium format.
• DateMedium – defines the medium format of the date, that contains more widely description then short format.
• DateShort – defines the short format of the date.
• DatePattern – indicates, that format for date should be defined through pattern.

EXAMPLE:

In the following table you can see how each format displays date 10 Sept 2012.

Auto	DateFull	DateLong	DateMedium	DateShort	DatePattern (yyyy.MMM.dd 'at' hh:mm:ss zzzz)

Valentina Report engine allows to format date according to a specified pattern. You can get acquainted with the principles of date formatting in the official page of Icu Library. Here you can find basic rules of compilation patterns, and examples of available patterns.

A date pattern is a string of characters, where specific strings of characters are replaced with date and time data from a source field or expression control.

The Date Field Symbol Table below contains the characters used in patterns to show the appropriate formats for a given locale, such as yyyy for the year. Characters may be used multiple times. For example, if y is used for the year, 'yy' might produce '99', whereas 'yyyy' produces '1999'. For most numerical fields, the number of characters specifies the field width. For example, if h is the hour, 'h' might produce '5', but 'hh' produces '05'. For some characters, the count specifies whether an abbreviated or full form should be used, but may have other choices, as given below.

Two single quotes represents a literal single quote, either inside or outside single quotes. Text within single quotes is not interpreted in any way (except for two adjacent single quotes). Otherwise all ASCII letter from a to z and A to Z are reserved as syntax characters, and require quoting if they are to represent literal characters. In addition, certain ASCII punctuation characters may become variable in the future (eg “:” being interpreted as the time separator and '/' as a date separator, and replaced by respective locale-sensitive characters in display).

“Stand Alone” values refer to those designed to stand on their own, as opposed to being with other formatted values. “2nd quarter” would use the stand alone format (QQQQ), whereas “2nd quarter 2007” would use the regular format (qqqq yyyy).

Let's consider few examples of how will be presented date 07/07/2012 12:30:45:765, using several patterns: