Defining a custom date-and-time format

You can define a custom date-and-time format using special symbols, shown in Table 3-4, to construct a format pattern. Use custom date formatting only for reports viewed in a single locale. Custom formats always display dates in the format you set, which can be inappropriate in other locales. For example, if you use the format MM-dd-yy, the date January 10, 2006 always appears as 01-10-06, regardless of the locale in which you view the report. For locales that customarily display dates in date-month-year format, Interactive Viewer interprets the date 01-10-06 as October 1, 2006.

Table 3-4

Symbols for defining custom date-and-time formats

Symbol	Description	Example
yy	Short year	08
yyyy	Long year	2008
MM	Month as a number	07
MMM	Short month name	Jul
MMMM	Full month name	July
d	Day in month	10
W	Week in month	2
w	Week in year	28
DD	Day in year	192
E	Short day of week	Thu
EEEE	Long day of week	Thursday
H	Hour in day (0 - 23)	0
k	Hour in day (1 - 24)	24
K	Hour in AM/PM (0 - 11)	0
h	Hour in AM/PM (1 - 12)	12
a	AM/PM	12:00:00AM
mm	Minutes	30
ss	Seconds	55

Table 3-5 shows examples of custom formats and their effects on a date stored as April 15, 2006 12:15:30 PM in the database.

Table 3-5

Results of custom date formats

Format pattern	Result of formatting
MM-dd-yy	04-15-06
E, M/d/yyyy	Fri, 4/15/2006
MMM d	Apr 15
MMMM	April
yyyy	2006
W	3 (the week in the month)
w	15 (the week in the year)
DD	105 (the day in the year)
h:mm:ss	12:15:30

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