Format date on custom field from custom module’s DB query

You have to replace the {event_date} yourself from the tag data. You are probably using $TMPL->swap_var_single() and passing it “event_date” which means “{event_date}” which is different than “{event_date format=""}”. So what you need to do, is preg_match() and preg_replace() the $TMPL->tagdata manually and make something like this (untested pseudo code)

if (preg_match("/{event_date\\s+format=\"([^\"]*)\"}/", $tagdata, $matches))
{
    $date = date($matches[1]);
    $tagdata = preg_replace("/{event_date \\sformat=\"([^\"]*)\"}/", $date, $tagdata);
}
else
{
    $tagdata = $TMPL->swap_var_single('event_date', date(), $tagdata);
}

Robert is right on, as always.

Although it’s not quite clear from your post if you’re having trouble grabbing the formatting or doing the parsing.

What we do in our own modules, is to grab the various date fields before looping through the data, so that regular expression only runs once, instead of running for every entry:

if (preg_match_all("/".LD."(event_date)\s+format=(\042|\047)([^\\2]*?)\\2".RD."/s", $TMPL->tagdata, $matches))
{
    for ($i = 0; $i < count($matches['0']); $i++)
    {
        $matches['0'][$i] = str_replace(array(LD,RD), '', $matches['0'][$i]);
        $event_date[$matches['0'][$i]] = $LOC->fetch_date_params($matches['3'][$i]);
    }
}

Now that you have that event_date array with keys that look exactly like your tags, you can do a simple str_replace inside your main loop:

foreach($some_data as $count => $data)
{
    foreach($TMPL->var_single as $var_key => $var_val)
    {
        if (isset($event_date[$var_key]))
        {
            foreach ($event_date[$var_key] as $dvar)
            {
                $var_val = str_replace($dvar, $LOC->convert_timestamp($dvar, $data['event_date'], TRUE), $var_val);
            }

            $tagdata = $TMPL->swap_var_single($var_key, $var_val, $tagdata);
        }
    }
}

Thanks for the replies, although to be honest I am not following you at all. 😉 What I’ve done is to forget about relying exclusively on template tags and just enabled PHP to echo the date out with date(). It may not be the ‘proper’ way, but at least I have been able to get results.

The problem is essentially what Robert outlined above. EE can easily replace {variable} with a value, but it has no way of knowing what the format parameter will look like, so it can’t guess at replacing it. If you’re not familiar with regular expressions this is going to be difficult to implement. However, if you can give us a reduced (!) version of the code you’re struggling with I’m sure we can help you make it work.

-Pascal

I’m going to have to do more research on the EE classes, but unfortunately it’ll have to wait. This is my first project and it’s been a lot to take in overall and at this particular moment I just need have a working alpha and I can adjust the code later. Case in point, I’m not familiar with $TMPL->swap_var_single()… A quick read of the template class page makes it look like the official way to replace tags with data, right? I basically made my own version of this as I muddle through the last couple weeks.

A quick read of the template class page makes it look like the official way to replace tags with data, right?

That’s right =) . I know it’s a bit overwhelming at first, it takes some time to sink in.

Remember that there is a lot of first and third party code out there that you can look at if you need inspiration.