showing a date tv as human readable

Hi,
I want to show a date (Starttime, used for ditto calls) gathered via tv in a ditto content output.
So I created a snipped like this in many variants

<?php
header(’Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8’);
setlocale(LC_ALL, ’de_DE@euro’, ’de_DE’, ’deu_deu’);
$dateSource = isset($dateSource) ? $dateSource : "StartTime";
return iconv(’ISO-8859-1’, ’UTF-8’, strftime("%d. %B. %Y | %H:%m", $dateSource));
?>

mostly I get an output like this

« MODx Parse Error »
MODx encountered the following error while attempting to parse the requested resource:
« PHP Parse Error »

PHP error debug
Error: strftime() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given
Error type/ Nr.: Warning - 2
File: /srv/www/web/html/a/manager/includes/document.parser.class.inc.php(769) : eval()’d code

some help would be appreciated

$dateSource = isset($dateSource) ? $dateSource : "StartTime";

What is the dateSource and what is StartTime?

I am guessing that this is not a valid parameter for strftime() due to the error message stating that the second parameter is not good.

Error: strftime() expects parameter 2 to be long, string given

StartTime is a tv I build for event management with Ditto.
It’s the kind of date / unixtime tv, that allows for Starttime input while editing and sorting … while ditto displays (in the later case it works fine).
dateSource I took as lokal variable to handle that.

I am thinking that the dateSource is not getting set.

You need to get the value from the template variable either by using the getTemplateVarOutput api function


Or by including an input parameter to the snippet call:


If this is a single purpose snippet I would hard code using the getTemplateVarOutput.

However you do not need to format the date to use it with Ditto, set the dateSource, and dateFormat parameters and use the [+date+] placeholder.

Here are some docs: http://ditto.modxcms.com/files/snippet-ditto-php.html#dateSource

A better solution would be to create an extender which sets a placeholder you can use in the Ditto template. Take a look at the example extender for a how to.

Yes, a very elegant solution (regretted more than one time that I’m not fit enough for coding that), would need a more nearby example.

@dev_cw
thanx for your time,

your "$dateSource = $modx -> getTemplateVarOutput( "StartTime" );" proposal only results in "01. Januar. 1970 | 01:01"

I only want to output the values of "StartTime" and "EndTime" as human readable in the content of the aproppriate content (as placeholder).

i. e. if input of StatrtTime tv is "24. 4. 08" the date also appears in some chunk or snippet, that I can place in a template.

<?php
header(’Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8’);
setlocale(LC_ALL, ’de_DE@euro’, ’de_DE’, ’deu_deu’);

/*$dSource = isset($dSource) ? $dSource : "StartTime"; */

$dSource = $modx -> getTemplateVarOutput( "StartTime" );
return iconv(’ISO-8859-1’, ’UTF-8’, strftime("%d. %B. %Y | %H:%m", $dSource));
?>

doesn’t work

And what about using the PHx dateformat filter (only used it with createdon, editedon and pub_date but might work for date tvs...) ?

@davidm
??

You can use PHx in your Ditto template chunks to format data. You can use the dateFormat function to format the date with PHx:
http://wiki.modxcms.com/index.php/PHx#date.28.3D.60dateformat.60.29

You need to set &phx=`1` in your ditto call to activate phx.
http://ditto.modxcms.com/files/snippet-ditto-php.html#phx