[Zope] input a date in european style, get it saved as type date (Was: How do I get the first ten characters of a string?)

[Andrew Williams]

>I like this fmt thing...

I agree...


>
>I tried a few things.
>
>My actual problem now is:
>
>I've got a form, which returns a date string in the form dd.mm.YYYY via 
>REQUEST.
>
>Before this last line I have to change my dd.mm.YYYY into Zope's 
>YYYY/mm/dd.
>i. e. s. th. like
>
><dtml-call "REQUEST.set('datum',?????)">
>
>I looked around in the How To's etc. but didn't find anything.
>
>Perhaps you could help me a last time for today.
>

Here are a couple of things:

First, you can tell Zope that a value returned from a form is a specific 
type; ie:

<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="somedate:date">
<INPUT TYPE="TEXT" NAME="someint:int">

Zope gets the request, and automagically casts somedate into a date object, 
and someint into an integer.  Check out this HowTo regarding Form Variable 
Types:  http://www.zope.org/Members/Zen/howto/FormVariableTypes


Second, you can also convert a string into a date object by doing the 
following:

<dtml-call "REQUEST.set('datevalue',_.DateTime(somedate)">

check out the Zope Quick Reference (ZQR) at http://www.zope.org/Members/ZQR 
for more info on the DateTime() function.


One caution, make sure you have validated that the user has inputted a 
correct date before doing the above.  Otherwise you will get error messages. 
  Personally, I use javascript to validate date fields *before* the user 
submits the form; saves me a lot of headaches.


Hope this helps,

Andrew Williams


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