At 11:36 15/10/99 , Samu Mielonen wrote:
Hello,
I'm trying to figure out the ZopeTime object (or is it a method?) and how to use it.
I've tried to render Finnish date and time, which is of format:
dd.mm.yyyy, hh:mm:ss
so for example:
15.10.1999m, 21:04:05
means 15th of October, 1999 at four past nine pm (and 5 seconds)
Rendering this visible with <dtml-var ZopeTime fmt=...> seems straightforward enough (here, without seconds):
<dtml-var release fmt="%d.%m.%Y, %H:%M">
but the problem is that %H (and %d, %m %Y too because of this?) are not from the current time zone (but from GMT?).
Yes, they are in GMT. This is the way default C libraries define it, and therefore of little use to us..
This means that if I use the above code at 11 o'clock a.m. Finnish time, I get result that says time is 9 o'clock a.m.
More than that, if I want a render the time of an object that had a release date (of Finnish time) at 01:59 am on the 1st of November 1999, the above code would show a release time of 11:59 pm 31st of October 1999 (?)
However, if I use the format:
<dtml-var ZopeTime fmt="h_24">
I get hours in 24-hour format in current time Zone (i.e. correct Finnish time).
Rendering the time this way would require me to type:
<dtml-var release fmt=day>.<dtml-var release fmt=month>.<dtml-var release fmt=year>, <dtml-var release fmt=h_24>:<dtml-var release fmt=%M>
am I correct? It seems to work ok, although I haven't checked whether the "day" changes according to GMT or current time zone (if it changes according to GMT hours, then I'm in trouble. Same for "month" and "year").
However, a few of questions puzzle me:
1) Are day, month, year and h_24 synchronized whereas %d,%m,%Y,%H are synchronised differently? (i.e. one should not mix them in order to avoid funny date/times).
No. Try and display 01/10/1999 00:00 and you'l see it will display a different date. Dates play along in the timezone game as well.
2) Why are the formats different? I couldnt find reason/documentation as to why one reports hours in current timezone and other in GMT. Or have I misunderstood something completelly?
The documentation can be found in the Python library reference. See the time module, and specifically the strftime method. It is used to support the fmt="%h:%m" like formats.
3) Are the two options (using one dtml-var ZopeTime vs using multiple ones) equal in the load they put on Zope? I would assume that a simple dtml-var call would be less of a load, no?
This may not sound like an important issue, but if the latter approach puts a five-fold increase on zope and I have to call that dtml method giving Finnish time, say 100 times on a page, well it might have an impact (?)
It adds a little overhead, but nothing noticable.
4) Can I somehow add the time zone difference to the time with simple add operation? i.e. can I use the <dtml-var release fmt="%d.%m.%Y, klo %H:%M"> format and somehow just tell that: "add +2 hours" to that time?
I'm assuming there isn't an add operation for timestamp data types in dtml? If there is one, is it clever enough to understand that when hours are overflowed, it has to tick one more day and deduct appropriately from hours (the same for month and years of course)?
How would I accomplish this (my apologies if a lot of my questions are about my inability to grok the syntax properly).
I stopped trying to use the format. I use a different aproach: <dtml-with ZopeTime> <dtml-var "'%02i/%02i/%i %s' % (day, month, year, Time)"> </dtml-with>
5) If I want to make a simple time comparison between release date property of an object and current time, how do I do it (e.g. if I only want to compare, say that the dates are same - not caring about years, months or hours and seconds). If my current object has a property release which has been set to ZopeTime at the time of creation:
I've tried making an equality check between (i.e. the below pseudo code in gazillion variations):
ZopeTime fmt=day = release fmt=day
but "fmt" mucks up the syntax somehow (I don't know how to write the comparison when fmt=day is present). Without the fmt attribute:
<dtml-if "ZopeTime=release">
worked fine (I think). So, how do I compare just parts (say days) of two timestamp properties? Do I need to create an external method?
The DateTime module has several comparison methods to do this. Remember that ZopeTime is a method as well. Here are some examples: ZopeTime().equalTo(release) ZopeTime().greaterThen(release) release.isPast() These methods can be found in the source of the DateTime module, and there is also a HTML page with some documentation in the lib/python/DateTime subdir of your Zope install. -- Martijn Pieters, Web Developer | Antraciet http://www.antraciet.nl | Tel: +31-35-7502100 Fax: +31-35-7502111 | mailto:mj@antraciet.nl http://www.antraciet.nl/~mj | PGP: http://wwwkeys.nl.pgp.net:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=0xA8A32149 ------------------------------------------