o-date provides javascript utilities for formatting and updating dates in FT style. This component is mainly useful when you want your dates formatted to express relative time.
This module has been verified in Internet Explorer 8+, modern desktop browsers (Chrome, Safari, Firefox, ...) and mobile browsers (Android browser, iOS safari, Chrome mobile).
To provide the best non-JS fallback you should markup your dates as follows:
<time data-o-component="o-date" class="o-date" datetime="{{iso8601String}}">{FT formatted date (including time if appropriate)}</time>
This module's format
method will also run in Node.js and can be used to populate your model with the appropriate formatted date string. It's not recommended to output the 'time ago' server side as it will not be cacheable and will not update in the browser if the user leaves the page open for a prolonged period of time.
To display dates in the standard relative time format, a o.DOMContentLoaded
event can be dispatched on the document
to auto-construct each element with a data-o-component="o-date"
attribute:
document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', function() {
document.dispatchEvent(new CustomEvent('o.DOMContentLoaded'));
});
You can also run require('o-date').init()
once the DOM has loaded if you don't want to initialise other modules at the same time.
Run require('o-date').init(el)
on any elements containing dates that are added to the page after DOM load.
Returns a date formatted as a string
date
: A javascriptDate
object or a valid string to pass to theDate
constructortpl
: A string specifying what format to output the date in:'datetime'
: formats the date in the standard FT long format, including the time. E.g.May 15, 2014 8:10 am
'date'
: formats the date in the standard FT long format. E.g.May 15, 2014
- Any other string using widespread conventions for time/date placeholders, which will be replaced with values extracted from the date provided. See
./main.js
for an up to date list of supported formats. To avoid e.g. themm
incommon
being replaced with the month prefix with a double backslashco\\mmon
i.e. In most cases custom date formats should not be used, in favour of the standard FT date and datetime formats
Returns the relative time since the given date, formatted as a human readable string e.g. 13 minutes ago
.
Returns relative time or timestamp for a given date, in accordance with FT date formatting conventions.
date
: A javascriptDate
object or a valid string to pass to theDate
constructor
Returns 'yesterday'
, 'today'
or ''
for a given date. You can request this formatting for o-date
components by adding data-o-date-format="today-or-yesterday-or-nothing"
.
date
: A javascriptDate
object or a valid string to pass to theDate
constructor
Within a given container element, converts dates to ftTime (see above) and periodically updates their values. Within the container all <time>
elements with o-date
in data-o-component
will be updated. If a given <time>
element contains an element with the class o-date__printer
the relative time will be output here, otherwise it will replace the contents of the entire <time>
element. Once the <time>
element has been formatted by o-date, the attribute data-o-date-js
is added, enabling conditional styling and/or hiding the date until it is correctly formatted.
el
: AnHTMLElement
within which to scan foro-date
elements. If the element itself is a<time>
element witho-date
indata-o-component
, then o-date will run directly on this element rather than querying for suitable elements within it.
If you have any questions or comments about this component, or need help using it, please either raise an issue, visit #ft-origami or email Origami Support.
This software is published by the Financial Times under the MIT licence.