The "Date" plugin provides an easy way to generate formatted time and date strings by delegating to the
"POSIX" strftime() routine.
The plugin can be loaded via the familiar USE directive.
[% USE date %]
This creates a plugin object with the default name of '"date"'. An alternate name can be specified as
such:
[% USE myname = date %]
The plugin provides the format() method which accepts a time value, a format string and a locale name.
All of these parameters are optional with the current system time, default format ('"%H:%M:%S %d-%b-%Y"')
and current locale being used respectively, if undefined. Default values for the time, format and/or
locale may be specified as named parameters in the "USE" directive.
[% USE date(format = '%a %d-%b-%Y', locale = 'fr_FR') %]
When called without any parameters, the format() method returns a string representing the current system
time, formatted by strftime() according to the default format and for the default locale (which may not
be the current one, if locale is set in the "USE" directive).
[% date.format %]
The plugin allows a time/date to be specified as seconds since the epoch, as is returned by time().
File last modified: [% date.format(filemod_time) %]
The time/date can also be specified as a string of the form "h:m:s d/m/y" or "y/m/d h:m:s". Any of the
characters : / - or space may be used to delimit fields.
[% USE day = date(format => '%A', locale => 'en_GB') %]
[% day.format('4:20:00 9-13-2000') %]
Output:
Tuesday
A format string can also be passed to the format() method, and a locale specification may follow that.
[% date.format(filemod, '%d-%b-%Y') %]
[% date.format(filemod, '%d-%b-%Y', 'en_GB') %]
A fourth parameter allows you to force output in GMT, in the case of seconds-since-the-epoch input:
[% date.format(filemod, '%d-%b-%Y', 'en_GB', 1) %]
Note that in this case, if the local time is not GMT, then also specifying '%Z' (time zone) in the format
parameter will lead to an extremely misleading result.
Any or all of these parameters may be named. Positional parameters should always be in the order
"($time, $format, $locale)".
[% date.format(format => '%H:%M:%S') %]
[% date.format(time => filemod, format => '%H:%M:%S') %]
[% date.format(mytime, format => '%H:%M:%S') %]
[% date.format(mytime, format => '%H:%M:%S', locale => 'fr_FR') %]
[% date.format(mytime, format => '%H:%M:%S', gmt => 1) %]
...etc...
The now() method returns the current system time in seconds since the epoch.
[% date.format(date.now, '%A') %]
The calc() method can be used to create an interface to the "Date::Calc" module (if installed on your
system).
[% calc = date.calc %]
[% calc.Monday_of_Week(22, 2001).join('/') %]
The manip() method can be used to create an interface to the "Date::Manip" module (if installed on your
system).
[% manip = date.manip %]
[% manip.UnixDate("Noon Yesterday","%Y %b %d %H:%M") %]