Dynamically format all date columns

gsanders

I am building a reporting screen that will dynamically build small reports and displays them using Datatables. I would like to have an easy way to automatically render all date columns in the same format. Since the columns will change based upon the report, simply using a column render is not feasible. CAn I use a type detect plugin for this?

colin

Without seeing your data it's hard to suggest a solution, but this example may help. If not, we're happy to take a look, but as per the forum rules, please link to a test case - a test case that replicates the issue will ensure you'll get a quick and accurate response. Information on how to create a test case (if you aren't able to link to the page you are working on) is available here.

Cheers,

Colin

gsanders

The test page is not on a publicly available server. I'll try and describe the issue a little more fully. The page is a screen that will allow users to pick from a variety of reports , I intend to then allow them to use the Searchbuilder plugin to pull the subset of data they desire. Each report will have a completely unique set of columns. For example , one report may return the following columns
UserName (string), TaskCompleted (Date), Title(string), EstimatedHoursRequired, HoursLogged(float)

And another might be ,
ProjectID (integer) , Title (string) , System(String), Priority(integer) , DateEntered(date) ,DateClosed(date) , Status(string)

For the most part the dates will all be date objects in the JSON, I want to format them as M/D/Y . I wanted to avoid using column renders because that requires me to deploy new javascript every time a new report is added to the page.
Does that help?

colin

There's a couple of ways to convert dates - see examples here and here - using Moment.js, as it's excellent for all time/date based operations. Hopefully those will get you going,

Colin

gsanders

Unfortunately both of those examples use column renders which require the initialiasation to be aware of which columns are dates and that changes with every report. I believe I've found a work-around by doing a quick iteration through the first row of data to find which columns are dates and building a columDef object . Thanks for your help.

allan

At the moment there isn't a way to set an output formatter based on type (although it is something I've actually considering). The approach you've taken is one way to do it - the other is to use an columns.render function which will check if the string given to it is an ISO time stamp. If so then render it - if not then just return it. That rendering function would then be applied to all columns.

Allan

gsanders

Thanks Allan. I may try a render function for all columns as that would let me check a few other things at the same time.