Ditto extender for custom placeholder (Evolution)

Hi,

I am using the latest Evolution Release and have phX installed.

My challenge is that I have a TV that is a date variable(Unixtime) used in a Ditto call.

It formats nicely using &dateFormat parameter without any problems

I now want to further work on the [+date+] placeholder that is created by Ditto.

Instead of outputting it as it is, I would like to split it so that I have a Month separated from Day. I use the format string `%b %d`. So intended to split it using the space as a delimiter(straightforward in PHP)

Here are some of the things I tried that have failed me:

- I tried creating a snippet that calls and returns the [+date+] placeholder using $modx->getPlaceholder(’date’) and also tried $modx->placeholders[’date’]

- I tried and failed to understand how to create a custom extender, which I assume is what I need so I can split the [+date+] placeholder as I require using PHP. I have gone through the specific example in the example.extender.inc.php file but I have failed to make sense of it.

Here are some search results I went through but havent really helped me understand:

http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php/topic,27564.msg168495.html
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=16013.0
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=35848.0
http://modxcms.com/forums/index.php?topic=26641.0

From the WIKI
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/Ditto_Custom_Placeholders

Perhaps I am slow (shrug), but I did try.

Hope someone can help.

Thanks for the great tool!!!

You could try using the [+date+] placeholder twice:

No, of course not! The date placeholder is already converted from the raw timestamp, so applying date formatters to it won’t work!

Try using the raw [+createdon:date=%b+] and [+createdon:date=%d+] instead.

And you don’t need to install the phx plugin for this; Ditto has its own phx internally.

Thanks Susan,

My original intention had been to work on the already formatted value. e.g, the date format string I used was `%b %d`( the Ditto call would have the parameters: &dateFormat=`%b %d` &dateSource=`MyDateTV` ). Since Ditto outputs the result in the placeholder called [+date+], all I wanted to do was work on that output value.

BUT, as always , I think you’ve provided me with an elegant solution. I didnt know Ditto had its internal phx. Thanks again, Susan!

P.S.
I think I would still like to understand how the Ditto extenders work. May come in handy

That did it! Thanks, Susan. You may have forgotten to put backticks.