dateFormat

Description

Returns the given date as a string, formatted according to a pattern. The pattern is a format that is full of various placeholders that will display different parts of the date. These are case-sensitive! These placeholders can be repeated for a different effect. For example, M will give you 1-12, MM will give you 01-12, MMM will give you Jan-Dec, MMMM will give you January-December.

The placeholders are:

Symbol	Description	Presentation	Examples	Other Notes
`G`	Era designator	Text	`G=AD`
`y`	Year	Year	`yyyy=1996`; yy=`96`	Lowercase y is the most commonly used year symbol
`Y`	Week year	Year	`YYYY=2009`; YY=`09`	Capital Y gives the year based on weeks (ie. changes to the new year up to a week early)
`M`	Month in year	Month	`MMMM=July`; MMM=`Jul`; MM=`07`
`w`	Week in year	Number	`27`	If Dec31 is mid-week, it will be in week 1 of the next year
`W`	Week in month	Number	`2`
`D`	Day in year	Number	`189`
`d`	Day in month	Number	`10`
`F`	Day of week in month	Number	`2`	2nd Sunday of the month
`E`	Day name in week	Text	`EEEE=Tuesday`; E=`Tue`
`u`	Day number of week	Number	`1`	(1 = Monday, ..., 7 = Sunday)
`a`	Am/Pm marker	Text	`PM`
`H`	Hour in day (0-23)	Number	`0`
`h`	Hour in am/pm (1-12)	Number	`12`
`k`	Hour in day (1-24)	Number	`24`
`K`	Hour in am/pm (0-11)	Number	`0`
`m`	Minute in hour	Number	`30`
`s`	Second in minute	Number	`55`
`S`	Millisecond	Number	`978`
`z`	Time zone	General time zone	`zzzz=Pacific Standard Time`; z=`PST`
`Z`	Time zone	RFC 822 time zone	`Z=-0800`
`X`	Time zone	ISO 8601 time zone	`X=-08`; XX=`-0800`; XXX=`-08:00`

Expert Tip: This function uses the Java class java.text.SimpleDateFormat internally, and will accept any valid format string for that class.

Syntax

dateFormat( date, pattern )

Examples

 dateFormat(toDate("2003-9-14 8:00:00"), "yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss") //returns the string "2003-09-14 08:00:00" This format is accepted in most databases

 dateFormat(toDate("2003-9-14 8:00:00"), "yyyy-MM-dd h a") //returns the string "2003-09-14 8 AM"

 dateFormat(toDate("2003-9-14 8:00:00"), "MMM d, yyyy") //returns the string "Sep 14, 2003"