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