CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpmysqlactionscript-3stringformatting
phil
phil

Reputation: 201

as3 - format a timestamp string from mysql

I'm receiving a date field from a php file, and I need to format it. I get this string: "2009-11-12 17:58:13" I want to convert to "November 12, 2009 5:58:13 pm"

I tried to work with the Date class, but I get stuff like this: Type Coercion failed: cannot convert "2009-11-12 17:58:13" to Date.

Anyone know of any good utilities for doing this?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 3324

Answers (5)

Cozzbie
Cozzbie

Reputation: 1

Sure thing when using AS3 to run anything is that at any one time YOU WOULD HAVE TO TINKER. Not so much so as the solution offered by Armagosh though.

To parse full formatted Date strings from a sql database in AS3 all you need do is toString() type it with the Date(sql_date) method of AS3. Please note that even though you won't be told, Date(string), Date.parse(string) and string as Date all work differently. Tinker my friend, Tinker...

Upvotes: 0

Amarghosh
Amarghosh

Reputation: 59461

If there is no straightforward solution, you can resort to regex:

private function formatDate(str:String):String
{

    var regex:RegExp = /(\d+)-(\d+)-(\d+)\s(\d+):(\d+):(\d+)/;
    var matches:Object = regex.exec(str);       
    var date:Date = new Date(matches[1], Number(matches[2]) - 1, matches[3], 
        matches[4], matches[5], matches[6]);
    var months:Array = ["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", 
        "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"];
    var result:String = months[date.month] + " ";
    result += date.date + ", " + date.fullYear + " ";
    if(date.hours > 12)
        result += (date.hours - 12) + ":" + date.minutes + ":" + 
            date.seconds + " pm";
    else
        result += date.hours + ":" + date.minutes + ":" + date.seconds + " am";
    return result;
}

Explanation of the regex /(\d+)-(\d+)-(\d+)\s(\d+):(\d+):(\d+)/

// Forward slashes - / - at the beginning and end are delimiters

\d+ /* One or more number of digits. 
     * Ideally it should be \d{n} (\d{4} - 4 digits), 
     * but I'm assuming that the input string would always be 
     * valid and properly formatted
     */

- and : //A literal hyphen/colon 

\s   //A whitespace (use \s+ to skip extra whitespaces)

()  /* Parenthetic groups used to capture a string for using it later
     * The return value of regex.exec is an array whose first element is 
     * the complete matched string and subsequent elements are contents
     * of the parenthetic groups in the order they appear in the regex
     */

Upvotes: 4

dustmachine
dustmachine

Reputation: 10824

Okay, instead of changing it at the AS3 or PHP level, how about changing it at the source? If you have control of the SQL statement, you could use the MySQL date_format() function:

 select date_format(YOUR_DATE_COLUMN, "%M %d, %Y %l:%i:%s %p") from ...

Admittedly it's moving a responsibility of the display toolkit farther down to a different layer, and in doing so might make the SQL or PHP less reusable by other clients, but it also gets the job done. And in some cases the easy way is how it should be done.

btw, here's my test query and the output from it:

select date_format(
              cast("2009-11-12 17:58:13" as datetime), 
              "%M %d, %Y %l:%i:%s %p") 
from dual;

Output: November 12, 2009 5:58:13 PM

See also: MySQL date_format() function

Upvotes: 0

dustmachine
dustmachine

Reputation: 10824

The built-in Date class has a parse() that should be able to parse that string into a real Date object. Then you could use the DateFormatter to turn it into a nicer string.

See also: Date parse() method reference

EDIT: Darn! I just noticed that parse() wants a format of Day Mon DD HH:MM:SS TZD YYYY

SECOND EDIT, assuming you can use mx.controls.DateFormatter:

import mx.formatters.DateFormatter;
var fmt:DateFormatter = new DateFormatter()
fmt.formatString = "MMMM D, YYYY L:NN:SS A"; 
var prettyDate:String = fmt.format("2009-11-12 17:58:13");

Upvotes: 3

lamelas
lamelas

Reputation: 872

You can use the date() function to convert it on the PHP side. Check the documentation for the formatting rules you can use.

This might get you what you want:

date("F j, Y g:i:s a", $yourDateString)

Example: if you run:

echo date("F j, Y g:i:s a")

you get:

November 13, 2009 1:45:19 am

Upvotes: 1

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