Using Dates in Enterprise Forms

Date Field in the CMS Form Editor

When you add a "Date Field" to a form in the CMS, you can configure several settings:

• Initial value: Sets the starting value for the date field. The value shown to site visitors depends on your site implementation. You can choose:

  • Empty: No initial value is set.
  • Specific date: Set a fixed date.
  • Offset from "today": Calculate the initial value as a relative offset from the current date when the page is visited.
  • Rule: Use a custom initial value rule. For details, see Custom Date Field Initial Value Rule.

• Date format: Defines the pattern used to specify and validate the date. If left empty, the default date format is used (see below). Supported formats include:

  • yyyy/MM/dd
  • MM/dd/yyyy
  • dd/MM/yyyy

  You can use a space, dash (-), dot (.), or forward slash (/) as the separator between day, month, and year. Typically, a front-end date picker widget is configured to match the date format, allowing users to enter dates in the correct format. The Enterprise Forms demo project includes an example implementation.

  Info: Starting with version 3.0.1, you can append a time pattern ( HH:mm) to the date format (separated by a space). This enforces time input in addition to the date.

Customizing the Default Date Format in the CMS

Info: This configuration is available from version 1.03.07.

By default, new date fields use the format pattern MM/dd/yyyy. You can change this default pattern with the following steps:

1. In the console, navigate to the frontend:plugin node at:

   /hippo:namespaces/eforms/form/editor:templates/_default_/form
   

2. Add or update the dateformat property with your preferred format pattern (for example, dd/MMM/yyyy). For supported patterns, refer to the Java Date Format Patterns.

To support language-specific formats, add properties named dateformat_<language> for each language (for example, dateformat_en, dateformat_nl, and so on).

Date Field Support in the Site

On the site, the date field is handled by the following class:

com.onehippo.cms7.eforms.hst.model.DateField

You can retrieve the Initial value and Date format for the field from the bean. Any logic or default values for the initial value are supported through this mechanism.