XP System Date Setting in relation to now() functi

mat41 · August 25th, 2004, 08:15 PM

Hello

This is something that has bugged me for a while now. I am Running XP Pro(SP1) and IIS 5.1 (SP1) in Australia GMT +10 TZ

Q1..Why does the now() function 'always' show mm/dd/yyy when?:

A.. my regional settings (control panel/regional settings and language option) are set to dd/mm/yyy (Aussie and my preferred format)

And

B.. My (Date and Time Properties / Time Zone) is set to Aussie Sydney....GMT +10

I am aware, and are familiar with the many date/time formatting VBScript functions, however:

Q2..Isnt the point of having the ability to change system formats to do just this (the now function gets it's values from the system clock - therefore it should reflect it)?

No matter what I do to my system (bear in mind I am a designer/coder not a system/network guy) I always have to run function to tweak dates

Q3..Am I missing something in IIS? my research tells me no, Iâm sure the p2p techoâs can clear this up

Thank you in advance

Wind is your friend
Matt

mahesh_ys@indiatimes.com · August 26th, 2004, 04:17 AM

Hi Matt

I faced the same problem while designing an ASP page.

I am not sure my answer may match the requirement u need,
But i can explain u what i did to get the Date in dd/mm/yyyy format.

Now() returns always in mm/dd/yyyy format. (Standard format)
The same thing is followed in MS SQL server also.
Regional setting won't bother NOW() IMHO.

if u want to acheive the task of formatting the date in dd/mm/yyyy.
Then the below said may help you.

1. Build a Activex DLL in VB6.0 that formats the date and returns in the desired
   format you need.
                                    OR

2. Write a function in ASP which interchanges the position of Month <-> Day for
   the given date.

Hope this may help you in little.

Cheers

Mn Karthik

mat41 · August 26th, 2004, 06:40 PM

Mn Karthik

Thank you for your suggestions

1..ooohhh Activex. I am not a fan and seems like a huge overkill considering the vbScript function we have available.

2..Yes this is the option I have been using, I assume most do. There are allot of date/time function that allow us to tweak dates in any way we wish - I use:

  FUNCTION amDate(varDate)
    IF isNull(varDate) OR Trim(varDate) = "" OR varDate = "Null" THEN
      amDate = "Null"
    ELSE
      amDate = "" & Day(DateValue(varDate)) & "/" & Month(DateValue(varDate)) & "/" & Year(DateValue(varDate)) & ""
    END IF
  END FUNCTION

This works nicely but as I said in my initial post:

"Q2..Isnt the point of having the ability to change system formats to do just this (the now function gets it's values from the system clock - therefore it should reflect it)?"

Any more input would be appreciated, Is this an XP/IE bug?

TY

Wind is your friend
Matt

owain · August 27th, 2004, 03:11 AM

The ISO date format is yyyy-mm-dd, using this format it is impossible for the computer to get the date wrong, e.g. 3/5/04 could be 3rd May '04, or 5th March '04, however with 2004-05-03, there is no doubt at all that the date is 3rd May 2004. You can use this date format in your ASP script without any problems, therefore instead of returning the date in local format, you could return it in ISO format and it won't matter what the internal date format is, it is guaranteed to be understood:

Code:

amDate = Format(Year(DateValue(varDate)), "0000") & "-" & _
         Format(Month(DateValue(varDate)), "00") & "-" & _
         Format(Day(DateValue(varDate)), "00")

Don't forget there is also the IsDate() function to test if a variable contains a valid date. I hope this helps.

Regards
Owain Williams

mat41 · August 29th, 2004, 02:19 AM

Owain

Thank you for your input. Here in Aus we must use dd/mm/yyy

I guess i am looking for an answer to the following question:

Q2..Isnt the point of having the ability to change system formats to do just this (the now function gets it's values from the system clock - therefore it should reflect it)?"

If my system is set to dd/mm/yyy shouldnt the now function show this format?

Wind is your friend
Matt

mat41 · August 30th, 2004, 06:18 PM

As an update to this post, all is well now. Every thing on my machine was AU format except the LOCALE. My machine was formatted and rebuilt, this is why I lost my setting and ALL my asp pages built before the format were showing in correct date formats (on screen dates). Our network guy done the rebuild and changed the registry key to rectify this, I will track him down and post the key to change for other people who may have this problem.

I think the key to ensure this doesnât happen is 'do your own rebuild'

TY

Wind is your friend
Matt

owain · August 31st, 2004, 04:26 AM

I am glad you found the answer to your problem, I appreciate that all dates must be returned in Ausie format as far as the client UI is concerned, however I find it a good practice to always handle dates in my code in ISO format (yyyy-mm-dd), this is true for entry and retrieval from a database (as long as the field in your DB is a date field then it will be saved as a date and the format in which it was inputted will not be stored). Then when you come to return the date to the client you can use the Format() function to provide the date in the appropriate format.

Regards
Owain Williams