YII : How to Change datetime format displayed on t

Question

A newbie question in Yii: I have a model of a table in Yii that contain a datetime field.

I'm using CActiveForm to display this field:

<div class="row">
    <?php echo $form->labelEx($model,'createdon'); ?>
    <?php echo $form->textField($model,'createdon', array('id'=>'createdon')); ?>
    <?php echo $form->error($model,'createdon'); ?>
</div>

but the textfield displayed is on datetime format come from MySQL which is yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss

How could I change the format displayed on the textfield to a different time format? (maybe dd/mm/yy or mm/dd/yy or else)

any help would be appreciated.

thanks!

Answer 1

If you want the date stored in one format, but displayed in another format (i.e. multiple views), then consider changing it in the model.

For example:

class Whatever extends CActiveRecord    
{
    protected function afterFind ()
    {
            // convert to display format
        $this->createdon = strtotime ($this->createdon);
        $this->createdon = date ('m/d/Y', $this->createdon);

        parent::afterFind ();
    }

    protected function beforeValidate ()
    {
            // convert to storage format
        $this->createdon = strtotime ($this->createdon);
        $this->createdon = date ('Y-m-d', $this->createdon);

        return parent::beforeValidate ();
    }
}

Which methods you override depends on what you're trying to achieve.

From the docs:

9. Customization CActiveRecord provides a few placeholder methods that can be overridden in child classes to customize its workflow.
   • beforeValidate and afterValidate: these are invoked before and after validation is performed.
   • beforeSave and afterSave: these are invoked before and after saving an AR instance.
   • beforeDelete and afterDelete: these are invoked before and after an AR instance is deleted.
   • afterConstruct: this is invoked for every AR instance created using the new operator.
   • beforeFind: this is invoked before an AR finder is used to perform a query (e.g. find(), findAll()).
   • afterFind: this is invoked after every AR instance created as a result of query.

Answer 2

This worked for me:

class SomeClass extends CActiveRecord
{

    protected function afterFind()
    {
        // convert to display format
        $this->my_date_time = DateTime::createFromFormat('Y-m-d H:i:s', $this->my_date_time)->format('d-m-Y');

        parent::afterFind();
    }

    protected function beforeSave()
    {
        // convert to storage format
        $this->my_date_time = DateTime::createFromFormat('d-m-Y', $this->my_date_time)->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

        return parent::beforeSave();
    }
}

Answer 3

All you need is to use CDateFormatter and it's method format

OR you could use native PHP's way to format date using function date

I think there are lots of examples in PHP manual on formatting options (as well as explanation of what each format modifier mean), so it wouldn't be a problem to figure things out, but if you have any problems with Yii's CDateFormatter, I can give you some examples.