Converting a Date

[Greg O'Connor]

Through a web form FileMaker receives a text like this:

Friday, 6 March, 2009

How to convert this into a FileMaker compatible date field like this: 3/6/2009?

I am stuck with it and don't know what to do. Is there an easy method or complicated calculation available?

Any help would be great.

Cheers

Greg

[comment]

Try something like:

Date ( 

Ceiling ( Position ( "janfebmaraprmayjunjulaugsepoctnovdec" ; Left ( MiddleWords ( ImportedDate ; 3 ; 1 ) ; 3 ) ; 1 ; 1 ) / 3 ) ; 

MiddleWords ( ImportedDate ; 2 ; 1 ) ; 

MiddleWords ( ImportedDate ; 4 ; 1 ) 

)

[Greg O'Connor]

Thanks, found a solution:

http://www.briandunning.com/cf/852

Custom Function:

GetTextAsDate (dateTxt; formatTxt)

... which I hopefully get to work!

Cheers

Edited March 12, 2009 by Guest

[LaRetta]

Holy Mule! Why use a long convoluted custom function when a clean, simple, tiny calculation will do it?

[Greg O'Connor]

If I only would be able to get the 'clean, simple, tiny calculation' get to work. Do you have a solution?

Cheers

Greg

[Lee Smith]

What was wrong with Comment's calculation?

[comment]

Where specifically is the difficulty?

ConvertDate.fp7.zip

[Greg O'Connor]

Perfect now. It did not work because I changed the format of the imported date.

Great sample, thanks a lot!

Greg

[LaRetta]

Well now, I liked that, Michael. I've used similar calcs to find the position of the short months but I've always used 1+Position(etc... ). But adding 1 is sloppy because it just changes 1.3333333333 to 2.3333333333 after divided by 3.

Your method of using Ceiling precisely rounds up to 2; no trailing .333333's. It's a good reminder ... I don't think I take advantage of Ceiling() often enough.

Edited March 12, 2009 by Guest