[Asterisk-Dev] DATETIME Variable or TIME in general

[John Todd]

>-----Original Message-----
>From: asterisk-dev-admin at lists.digium.com
>[mailto:asterisk-dev-admin at lists.digium.com] On Behalf Of John Todd
>Sent: Tuesday, October 07, 2003 1:54 AM
>To: asterisk-dev at lists.digium.com
>Subject: Re: [Asterisk-Dev] DATETIME Variable or TIME in general
>
>  >Which format _should_ be correct? Code or Readme.  Currently I have to
>  >do AGI to fix this would prefer not to have to.  Any objections to
>  >changing to non-punctuated ISO format of:
>  >
>>YYYYMMDDTHHMMSSTZD
>>    for today
>>20031006T120234-0500
>>
>>And also adding a Standard Variable of something like ${ISOTIME} for
>  >everyone to use.  Would be very useful for many things including file
>  >names and easy to parse!
>  >
>>
>  >-Nicholas
>>
>  >----------
>>
>>Readme Says this:
>>
>>${DATETIME} Current date time in the format: YYYY-MM-DD_HH:MM:SS
>>
>>Code says this:
>>
>>   } else if (c && !strcmp(var, "DATETIME")) {
>>     thistime=time(NULL);
>>     localtime_r(&thistime, &brokentime);
>>     snprintf(workspace, workspacelen -1, "%02d%02d%04d-%02d:%02d:%02d",
>>       brokentime.tm_mday,
>>       brokentime.tm_mon+1,
>>       brokentime.tm_year+1900,
>>       brokentime.tm_hour,
>>       brokentime.tm_min,
>>       brokentime.tm_sec
>>       );
>>     *ret = workspace;
>
>It doesn't seem like a big issue to create an ISOTIME string.  Why
>don't you create the routine and submit it as a feature request to
>the bugtracker (http://bugs.digium.com/)?  I, too, have been using an
>AGI hack to get the time into the "correct" format, since ${DATETIME}
>doesn't have a logical ordering to the values.
>
>JT

At 8:40 AM -0500 10/7/03, Ben Miller wrote:
>
>Yeah, I'm the victim that put the time in that fashion and probably
>messed up the docs too.  However, Unless ISOTIME is going to fix it for
>everyone, you might consider an app_time(VARIABLE,format) so that you
>and others can change their minds and put the time in whatever format
>they want.
>Just a thought, cause I can vouch for the adage that you can't please
>everyone. ;-)
>Ben


Ben -
   Maybe you could create the app_time application, or perhaps as a 
different way of doing it there might be a separate variable 
(DATEFORMAT) which would take a subset of strftime(3) values, like 
this:

exten 1234,1,SetVar(DATEFORMAT="%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S %z")

would then make any call for the value ${DATETIME} look like this:

Tue, 07 Oct 2003 10:09:33 -0500

Of course, you just as easily could change the ${DATEFORMAT} format 
to make ${DATETIME} look like:

20031007T100933-0500

This seems a bit more flexible than setting a variable with an 
application, which seems like it would clutter a dialplan very 
quickly, since every instance where one used ${DATETIME} one would 
need to either call a macro or have an additional line in the 
dialplan.  I'm more in favor of setting the format once, and then 
expecting that format unless told otherwise.

JT