RE: Dates and XSL

If you are processing on a server or a client with access to Java
extensions, you can write an xpath extension function to format dates.  (I
do it in LotusXSL, but it's also possible in SAXON and probably others.)

For example, somewhere in the transform you will have something like:

...
<xsl:value-of select="myExt:dateFormat(ORDERDATE,'EEE d MMM yyyy')"/>
...

The additional voodoo you need in the transform to recognize the extension
is implementation-dependent.

You can handle time zones cleanly with a little more trouble if your
database keeps everything in, say, UTC and if you can put the Java
TimeZone.getID() string appropriate for rendering somewhere in your XML.

-r

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> [mailto:owner-xsl-list@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]On Behalf Of Jon Smirl
> Sent: Sunday, October 31, 1999 11:45 AM
> To: XSLList
> Subject: Dates and XSL
>
>
> What's the best way to deal with dates? When my dates come out of the
> database they look like: 1999-10-29 13:00:00.0.  When displaying
> this date I
> want to either show October or pick October from a dropdown menu so this
> means I have to break apart the date. I also need to reorder it
> depending on
> the display format.
>
> Should I break it apart at XML generation time into
> <year>1999</year><month>10</month>, etc?  or would it be better to pick it
> apart with the XSL substring function? It's clear to me that XSL
> should have
> date support built in.
>
> I'm not happy with any of the solutions I've come up with, does
> anyone have
> any better ideas?
>
> Jon Smirl
> jonsmirl@xxxxxxxxxxxx
>
>
>
>  XSL-List info and archive:  http://www.mulberrytech.com/xsl/xsl-list
>


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