The DATETIME custom tag library contains tags which can be used to handle date and time related functions.

Tags are provided for formatting a Date for output, generating a Date from HTML form input, using time zones, and localization.

To specify the time format use a time pattern string. In this pattern, all ASCII letters are reserved as pattern letters, which are defined as the following:

 Symbol   Meaning                Presentation       Example
 ------   -------                ------------       -------
 G        era designator         (Text)             AD
 y        year                   (Number)           1996
 M        month in year          (Text & Number)    July & 07
 d        day in month           (Number)           10
 h        hour in am/pm (1~12)   (Number)           12
 H        hour in day (0~23)     (Number)           0
 m        minute in hour         (Number)           30
 s        second in minute       (Number)           55
 S        millisecond            (Number)           978
 E        day in week            (Text)             Tuesday
 D        day in year            (Number)           189
 F        day of week in month   (Number)           2 (2nd Wed in July)
 w        week in year           (Number)           27
 W        week in month          (Number)           2
 a        am/pm marker           (Text)             PM
 k        hour in day (1~24)     (Number)           24
 K        hour in am/pm (0~11)   (Number)           0
 z        time zone              (Text)             Pacific Standard Time
 '        escape for text        (Delimiter)
 ''       single quote           (Literal)          '
 

(Text): 4 or more pattern letters--use full form, < 4--use short or abbreviated form if one exists.

(Number): the minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount. Year is handled specially; that is, if the count of 'y' is 2, the Year will be truncated to 2 digits.

(Text & Number): 3 or over, use text, otherwise use number.

Any characters in the pattern that are not in the ranges of ['a'..'z'] and ['A'..'Z'] will be treated as quoted text. For instance, characters like ':', '.', ' ', '#' and '@' will appear in the resulting time text even they are not embraced within single quotes.

A pattern containing any invalid pattern letter will result in a thrown exception during formatting or parsing.

Examples Using the US Locale:

 Format Pattern                    Result
 --------------                    -------
 "yyyy.MM.dd G 'at' hh:mm:ss z"    1996.07.10 AD at 15:08:56 PDT
 "EEE, MMM d, ''yy"                Wed, July 10, '96
 "h:mm a"                          12:08 PM
 "hh 'o''clock' a, zzzz"           12 o'clock PM, Pacific Daylight Time
 "K:mm a, z"                       0:00 PM, PST
 "yyyyy.MMMMM.dd GGG hh:mm aaa"    1996.July.10 AD 12:08 PM