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perldatetime
Rudra
Rudra

Reputation: 739

Can't locate object method "strftime" via package

I have written a perl script, where I call a subroutine to insert the fields into a database table. The subroutine is called in another file Test.pm other than the main perl file Test.pl. In Test.pm I have the following fields to insert into table 

my $date = localtime->strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S');
my $time = localtime->strftime('%H:%M:%S');

But, here I get the following error 

Can't locate object method "strftime" via package

What is this error and why does this occur. If I pass the parameters of $date and $time from Test.pl, the script works fine , how can I solve this?

Below is the subroutine :

sub send_message
{
     my $date = localtime->strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S');
     my $time = localtime->strftime('%H:%M:%S');
     print "Date : $date Time : $time";
     my $sql1 = "Insert into testtable(time,date) values('$time','$date')";
     my $sth1 = $dbh->prepare($sql1);
        $sth1->execute
        or die "SQL Error: $DBI::errstr\n";
     return;
}

Upvotes: 2

Views: 5352

Answers (3)

Karsten S.
Karsten S.

Reputation: 2391

First: the error means that your script wants to call the method strftime which shall be defined in a special package. Looking at your script, the following happens:

  1. you are calling localtime which is a method and returns the current time as a string, e.g. "Thu Jun 20 01:14:01 2013"
  2. you try to call the method strftime defined in a package (module) with the name returned by localtime. That doesn't work.

strftime is defined in POSIX and takes >1 parameters: the format and the time. You probably want to call:

use POSIX;

my $date = POSIX::strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S', localtime);
my $time = POSIX::strftime('%H:%M:%S', localtime);

or, because you're calling this method twice:

use POSIX;

my @localtime = localtime;
my $date = POSIX::strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S', @localtime);
my $time = POSIX::strftime('%H:%M:%S', @localtime);

since localtime returns an array which should be the input to strftime.

Upvotes: 9

Richard Huxton
Richard Huxton

Reputation: 22952

Close @Jim Garrison, but I think it's a missing use Time::Piece issue.

@Rudra - try adding that to the top of your script and see if it does the job.

Upvotes: 6

Jim Garrison
Jim Garrison

Reputation: 86774

localtime is a builtin function and strftime is part of the POSIX package, so you don't use -> syntax. The best reference is at perldoc. For example

use POSIX qw(strftime);
$now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", localtime;
# or for GMT formatted appropriately for your locale:
$now_string = strftime "%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Y", gmtime;

Upvotes: 0

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