Format a date from inside a Handlebars Template in Meteor

Question

I got a ISO formatted Date from my Data and what I actually want to do, is to modify my date format directly from my Templates.

like this:

{{format my.context.date "myFormat"}} 

I'm using the moment library, so I could write something like this:

{{formatDate my.context.date "DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm"}} // 03.09.2013 18:12 

It would be nice, because I think it's the place where I should be able to do this. In my template.

Answer 1

The solution is quite simple, and maybe someone will find it useful. In most projects you have a couple of date formats you want to use. So it's a good approach to define your formats with readable names.

For this example I took just 'short' and 'long', but you will see, it's very easy to extend.

So I created an Object in my Client Script:

var DateFormats = {        short: "DD MMMM - YYYY",        long: "dddd DD.MM.YYYY HH:mm" }; 

Also, I created a Handlebars Helper "formatDate".

Edited: Now you should use UI instead of Handlebars

// Deprecated since version 0.8.0  Handlebars.registerHelper("formatDate", function(datetime, format) {  // Use UI.registerHelper.. UI.registerHelper("formatDate", function(datetime, format) {   if (moment) {     // can use other formats like 'lll' too     format = DateFormats[format] || format;     return moment(datetime).format(format);   }   else {     return datetime;   } }); 

As you can see, I use the moment.js lib in my Helper. To install it, just type meteor add momentjs:moment from your command line.

And now, everywhere in my Templates I can use it with the two params, like this:

{{formatDate MyISOString "short"}} // 02 September - 2013 {{formatDate MyISOString "long"}} //  Monday 02.09.2013 18:00 

If you want to create your own formats, take a look at the momentjs docs http://momentjs.com/docs/

Happy coding!