Date times, durations and recurrences
Description
This plugin adds the power of date-time manipulations of
Date::Manip to Foswiki:
- localized formatting of date time
- time deltas, durations
- recurrences
In addition all calculations can either be performed in "standard" mode or in "business" mode. Standard arithmetics are performed
based on the normal calendar relationship. In business mode off times are left out. Only working days of a week, work times per day
and holidays are excluded from calcuating durations, deltas and recurences.
There are related plugins that have a feature overlap with this one.
- TimeSincePlugin: can only render durations, is superseded by the
%DURATION macro
- SpreadSheetPlugin: its
%FORMATTIMEDIFF is yet another implementation of the same feature that %DURATION provides; this plugin is able to perform simple time calculations
- DateTimePlugin: this is another plugin to add more flexibility to the core date macros of Foswiki; albeit its name it does not use the DateTime and its related perl packages; localization as well as supported date formats are rather limitted
- there are a set of core macros (%GMTIME, %DATE, %SERVERTIME, etc) that all tend to cover the same feature, however are rather limited and not localized
None of the previous work covers recurrences or a "business" mode of date calculations.
Language support
Date::Manip is able to parse a wide variety of date formats, as well as understands date times and deltas specified by a limited set of natural language
in various languages.
Supported languages are:
- Catalan
- Danish
- Dutch
- English
- Finnish
- French
- German
- Italian
- Norwegian
- Polish
- Portugue
- Romanian
- Russian
- Spanish
- Swedish
- Turkish
Unless specified explicitly in the macro or via the
LANGUAGE preference setting, the browser's language is used to parse and render date times and deltas.
See the
list of english terms that can be used in dates.
Examples
Dates
%DATETIME{"today"}%
%DATETIME{"1st Thursday in June 1992"}%
%DATETIME{"05/10/93"}%
%DATETIME{"8:00pm December tenth"}%
%DATETIME{"2017/11/21" delta="one week later"}%
%DATETIME{"now" delta="in two hours three minutes"}%
%DATETIME{"jetzt" delta="vor zwei tagen" language="de"}%
%DATETIME{"2/Mar/1999 15:30:00 +0500"}%
%DATETIME{"Jan 30 1999 13:00 EST"}%
%DATETIME{"1511259079"}%
%DATETIME{"1er decembre 1990" language="fr"}%
Durations
%DURATION{"in 12 hours"}%
%DURATION{"-1:30:0"}%
%DURATION{"4 business days later"}%
Recurrences
Every second hour today
%RECURRENCE{
frequency="0:0:0:0:2:0:0"
start="today"
end="tomorrow"
}%
2nd Tuesday of every month from Jan 1 1999 to Apr 30 1999
%RECURRENCE{
frequency="0:1*2:2:0:0:0"
start="Jan 1 1999"
end="Apr 30 1999"
format=" * $weekday, $day $month $year"
separator="$n"
}%
Monday after Easter in 1997-1999
%RECURRENCE{"*1997-1999:0:0:0:0:0:0*EASTER,ND1"}%
Syntax
%DATETIME
This macro is used to output a date and/or a time or any portion of it. A point in time can either be specified directly in one of the many formats understood, or using an additional delta which is either added or subtracted from the base date.
| Parameter |
Description |
Default |
"<date-spec>", date="<date-spec>" |
date; see the list of valid date formats below |
now |
delta="<delta-spec>" |
a duration added or subtracted from the given date |
0:0:0:0:0:0:0 |
business="<boolean>" |
switch to enable/disable business date arithmetics |
off |
subtract="<boolean>" |
switch to enable subtraction of the given delta |
off |
format="<format-spec>" |
format string to render the date time output; see below for valid format strings |
$Foswiki::cfg{DateManipPlugin}{DefaultDateTimeFormat} or %d %b %Y - %H:%M |
lang="...", language="..." |
code of language that date is parsed as well as formatted |
LANGUAGE preference setting or the browser's default language |
A
<format-spec> may use either the
printf directives of Date::Manip or Foswiki's own tokens as per
VarGMTIME
with a few additions and diversions.
Foswiki tokens
| Token |
Unit |
Example |
$iso |
ISO format timestamp |
2024-12-22T10:14:04Z |
$rcs |
RCS format timestamp |
2024/12/22 10:14:04 |
$http |
E-mail & http format timestamp |
Sun, 22 December 2024 10:14:04 GMT |
$year |
4 digit year |
1999 |
$ye |
2 digit year |
99 |
$month |
name of month |
December |
$mon |
short name of month |
Dec |
$mo |
2 digit month |
12 |
$weekday |
name of day of the week |
Tuesday |
$wday |
short name of day of the week |
Tue |
$day |
day of month |
31 |
$dow |
day of the week (Sun = 0) |
2 |
$doy |
day of the year |
123 |
$dom |
day of the month with suffix |
1rst, 2nd, ... |
$hours |
hours 00 - 23 |
23 |
$h |
hours 0 - 23 |
7 |
$hours12 |
hours 01 - 12 |
11 |
$h12 |
hours 1 - 12 pm/am |
7 pm |
$minutes |
minutes |
59 |
$seconds |
seconds |
59 |
$week |
number of week in year (ISO 8601) |
34 |
$tz |
time zone abbreviation |
EDT |
$offset |
time zone as GMT offset |
+0100 |
$epoch |
number of seconds since 00:00 on 1st January, 1970 |
1734862444 |
Printf tokens
Year
%y year - 00 to 99
%Y year - 0001 to 9999
Month, Week
%m month of year - 01 to 12
%f month of year - " 1" to "12"
%b,%h month abbreviation - Jan to Dec
%B month name - January to December
Day
%j day of the year - 001 to 366
%d day of month - 01 to 31
%e day of month - " 1" to "31"
%v weekday abbreviation - " S"," M"," T", ...
%a weekday abbreviation - Sun to Sat
%A weekday name - Sunday to Saturday
%w day of week - 1 to 7 (1=Monday)
%E day of month with
suffix - 1st, 2nd, 3rd...
Hour
%H hour - 00 to 23
%k hour - " 0" to "23"
%i hour - " 1" to "12"
%I hour - 01 to 12
%p AM or PM
Minute, Second, Time zone
%M minute - 00 to 59
%S second - 00 to 59
%Z time zone abbreviation - EDT
%z time zone as GMT offset - +0100
%N time zone as GMT offset - +01:00:00
Epoch
%s seconds from
1/1/1970 GMT - negative if before
%o seconds from 1/1/1970
in the current time
zone
Date, Time
%c %a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y - Fri Apr 28 17:23:15 1995
%C,%u %a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y - Fri Apr 28 17:25:57 EDT 1995
%g %a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %Z - Fri, 28 Apr 1995 17:23:15 EDT
%D %m/%d/%y - 04/28/95
%x %m/%d/%y or %d/%m/%y - 04/28/95 or 28/04/95
(Depends on DateFormat variable)
%l date in ls(1) format
%b %e %H:%M - Apr 28 17:23 (*)
%b %e %Y - Apr 28 1993 (*)
%r %I:%M:%S %p - 05:39:55 PM
%R %H:%M - 17:40
%T,%X %H:%M:%S - 17:40:58
%V %m%d%H%M%y - 0428174095
%Q %Y%m%d - 19961025
%q %Y%m%d%H%M%S - 19961025174058
%P %Y%m%d%H:%M:%S - 1996102517:40:58
%O %Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S - 1996-10-25T17:40:58
%F %A, %B %e, %Y - Sunday, January 1, 1996
%K %Y-%j - 1997-045
Special Year/Week formats
%G year, Monday as first
day of week - 0001 to 9999
%W week of year, Monday
as first day of week - 01 to 53
%L year, Sunday as first
day of week - 0001 to 9999
%U week of year, Sunday
as first day of week - 01 to 53
%J %G-W%W-%w - 1997-W02-2
Other formats
%n insert a newline character
%t insert a tab character
%% insert a `%' character
%+ insert a `+' character
All other characters are currently unused, but may be used in the
future. They currently insert the character following the %.
The following multi-character formats also exist:
Extended formats
%<A=NUM> These returns the NUMth value of the %A, %a, and %v formats
%<a=NUM> respectively. In English, that would yield:
%<v=NUM> %<A=2> => Tuesday
%<a=2> => Tue
%<v=2> => T
NUM must be in the range 1-7.
%<B=NUM> These return the NUMth value of the %B and %b formats
%<b=NUM> respectively. In English, that would yield:
%<B=2> => February
%<b=2> => Feb
NUM must be in the range 1-12 (or 01-12).
%<p=NUM> These return the NUMth value of the %p format. In
English, that would yield:
%<p=1> => AM
%<p=2> => PM
NUM must be in the range 1-2.
%<E=NUM> These return the NUMth value of the %E format. In
English, that would yield:
%<E=1> => 1st
%<E=53> => 53rd
NUM must be in the range 1-53.
%DURATION
This macro returns the number of seconds, minuts, hours, ..., years in the specified delta. A duration can either be given
by two dates
from and
to or directly as in "in two hours" or the like. The output is either rendered using a given duraction spec string in the
format parameter
or via a list of units such as in "2 days 3 hours and 1 minute"
| Parameter |
Description |
Default |
"<delta-spec>" |
duration of the time span; if specified from and to are not used |
0:0:0:0:0:0:0 |
from="<date-spec>" |
time span start |
now |
to="<date-spec>" |
time span end |
now |
lang="...", language="..." |
code of language that from and to is parsed |
LANGUAGE preference setting or the browser's default language |
business="<boolean>" |
switch to enable/disable business date arithmetics |
off |
subtract="<boolean>" |
switch to subtract from from to rather than the other way around |
off |
format="<delta-spec>" |
if specfified will render the delta based on a "delta-spec" or as plain $epoch seconds. For example %Dt will return the raw delta value in Date::Manip's delta notation; if not will the number of hours, minutes, seconds etc be returned |
|
years="<boolean>" |
switch on/off the "years" unit |
on |
months="<boolean>" |
switch on/off the "months" unit |
on |
weeks="<boolean>" |
switch on/off the "weeks" unit |
on |
days="<boolean>" |
switch on/off the "days" unit |
on |
hours="<boolean>" |
switch on/off the "hours" unit |
on |
minutes="<boolean>" |
switch on/off the "minutes" unit |
on |
seconds="<boolean>" |
switch on/off the "seconds" unit |
on |
all="<boolean>" |
switch on/off all units (seconds, minutes,...,years), so that they can be enabled/disabled individually |
on |
null="..." |
string to be returned for a duration of zero seconds |
null |
units="..." |
maximum number of units to use; the rest of the duration value is truncated |
|
labels="<boolean>" |
switch on/off labels |
on |
A duration is stored internally as a vector
1:2:3:4:5:6:7 which specifies the years, months, weeks, days, hours, minutes and seconds of a duration.
In general each of these values can be positive as well as negative. Tokens of a %DURATION's format string start with a
%. A single
% is replaced by a double
%%.
| Token |
Description |
Example |
%[+][pad][width]Xv |
directives to print out a single field; X is one of y,M,w,d,h,m,s, pad is <, > or 0 |
"Month: %Mv": Month 2, "Day: %+05v": Day: +0004 |
%[+][pad][width][.precision] XYZ |
directives to print out several fields in terms of one of them; X, Y, and Z are each one of y,M,w,d,h,m,s |
%sdh day and hour fields in terms of seconds, "%.4Myw months": 14.6900 monts |
%[+][pad][width]DXY |
directives to print out portions of the duration; X and Y are each one of y,M,w,d,h,m,s |
%+Dyd: +1:+2:+3:+4 |
%[+][pad][width]Dt |
directive to print out all of the duration |
|
If
no format string is specified a list of units is returne and the
years,
months,
weeks,
days,
hours,
minutes and
seconds parameters take effect, as well as
limit,
units and
null.
For example
%DURATION{from="12:00" to="18:47:03"}%
will return
6 hours, 47 minutes and 3 seconds
in case your browser language is set to English
or
6 Stunden, 47 Minuten und 3 Sekunden
when set to German.
WARNING: right now Date::Manip does not support localized output of durations by itself. The
output of the
%DURATION macro is not affected by its
language parameter.
It only affects the way a
<delta-spec> or
<date-spec> is
parsed in. Thus we are using Foswiki's support for internationalization, i.e. its
%MAKETEXT macro ... which however does not produce
any other language's output other than the browser's currently configured one.
%RECURRENCE
A recurrence is a compact specification of a set of dates. This macro will render a list of date times within the given recurrence.
Please have a look at
the official frequency notation] for a detailed explanation.
A recurrence can either be specified in the compact notation - such as in
"*1997-1999:0:0:0:0:0:0*EASTER,ND1" - or separated into the five base parameter,
frequency,
start,
end,
base and
modifiers.
Either a
rec-spec or a
frequency parameter is mandatory. The parameters
frequency,
start,
end,
base and
modifiers are ignored once a
rec-spec is provide. If no
end date is specified the
recurrence is open. Make sure that you restrict the output of returned dates using the
limit parameter.
| Parameter |
Description |
Default |
"<rec-spec>" |
recurrence specifier |
|
freq="...", frequency="..." |
frequency specifier |
|
start="<date-spec>" |
date when the recurence starts |
now |
end="<date-spec>" |
date when the recurence ends |
|
base="<date-spec>" |
base date when the recurence starts; this date is used by the modifiers, i.e. to specify an offset for the recurrence |
|
limit="..." |
maximum number of dates rendered in the output |
1000 |
lang="...", language="..." |
output language of date times |
LANGUAGE preference setting or the browser's default language |
format="&format-spec>" |
format string to render a date time in the list of returned dates |
$Foswiki::cfg{DateManipPlugin}{DefaultDateTimeFormat} or %d %b %Y - %H:%M |
header="..." |
header string prepended to the output in case the recurrence is not empty |
|
footer="..." |
footer string appended to the output in case the recurrence is not empty |
|
separator="..." |
separator string between returned lines returned |
|
Part of the power of Date::Manip is its cheer amount of formats of dates, times and durations it is able to parse. So instead of repeating the documentation available online for this perl package here are simply the links to
the real source of the documentation.
Installation Instructions
You do not need to install anything in the browser to use this extension. The following instructions are for the administrator who installs the extension on the server.
Open configure, and open the "Extensions" section. "Extensions Operation and Maintenance" Tab -> "Install, Update or Remove extensions" Tab. Click the "Search for Extensions" button.
Enter part of the extension name or description and press search. Select the desired extension(s) and click install. If an extension is already installed, it will
not show up in the
search results.
You can also install from the shell by running the extension installer as the web server user: (Be sure to run as the webserver user, not as root!)
cd /path/to/foswiki
perl tools/extension_installer <NameOfExtension> install
If you have any problems, or if the extension isn't available in
configure, then you can still install manually from the command-line. See
https://foswiki.org/Support/ManuallyInstallingExtensions for more help.
Dependencies
| Name | Version | Description |
|---|
| Date::Manip | >=6.0 | Required. |
Change History
| 19 Oct 2020 |
fixed compatibility check for DateTimePlugin; added $epoch to %DURATION macro |
| 12 Nov 2019 |
improve compatibility with default time formatting |
| 03 Oct 2018 |
performance improvement |
| 20 Jun 2018 |
monkey patch core date time parser and formatter with own one |
| 28 May 2018 |
support "all ints" epoch seconds without having to prefix it with "epoch" (compatibility with DateTimePlugin) |
| 24 Nov 2017 |
initial release |
Copyright © by the contributing authors. All material on this site is the property of the contributing authors.