Usage of Formate Date in CPO

[msivarami3]

Hi,

I need small help on Formate date activity. Below are the details:

Required output format:       MM'/'dd'/'yyyy hh:mm tt

Input: System date           ( 05.07.2012 17:25:39)

In the above formate, tt refers to AM/PM but i am unable see AP,PM in my output.

My output:  07/05/2012 05:25

Required output: 07/05/2012 05:25 PM.

Provide

[meisenst]

You can pretty much feed any style of input string, but you have to "teach" CPO how to read it.

For your case, I tried the following and got your desired output.

Use the "Parse Date" activity first:

Format String = dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss

Input String = 05.07.2012 17:25:39

Then use the "Format Date" activity next:

Format String = MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm tt

Original Date = [Workflow.Parse Date.Result]

[msivarami3]

Hi Michael,

Thanks for reply.

I have tried your scenario as follows:

Scenairio 1)

a)  Parse Date

format string : dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss

Input string [Server.Current.Time] 

Failing with error message "String was not recognized as a valid DateTime." input is --- 06.07.2012 16:20 (UTC+02:00)

Scenario 2:

a) Parse date activity

Format String = dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm:ss

Input String = 05.07.2012 17:25:39

Then use the "Format Date" activity next:

Format String = MM/dd/yyyy hh:mm tt

Original Date = [Workflow.Parse Date.Result]

Out put: 07.05.2012 05:25

In 2nd scenario, / is replaced with . and it is not showing the AM and PM values in output.

I am using CPO 2.3.

[meisenst · Accepted solution]

In the first case, you have to use a format string that matches your input to "teach" the system how to convert an arbitrary string into something known as a piece of datetime data. 

The whole idea of Parse Date is to convert a string into a datetime.  [Server.Current Time] is already a datetime, so this is an unecessary step, but if you wanted to try it you'd have to use the right parser string.  For your datetime format,

06.07.2012 16:20 (UTC+02:00)

would be parsed properly with

dd.MM.yyyy HH:mm (UTCK)

As for the second scenario, some system cultures don't return AM/PM.  Can you try checking the checkbox to "Use specified culture..." and enter "en-US"?

(I'm a little concerned about this solving it, since you're also getting dots instead of slashes so it's like the formatter isn't doing anything)

[msivarami3]

Hi Michael,

The second scenario is worked with "en-US". Without using the parsing of date i am able to get the required solution.

Thanks for providing the solution.