Appendix 1: Details of format patterns

A format pattern is a string and can be used for specifying patterns to format strings, which are in XML instance. JReport format patterns only supports specifying patterns to format time data type strings, such as date, time and datetime. You can customize the format pattern for date, time and datetime formats or use default ones.

In the process of transforming an XML schema to relational tables, you can choose to customize the format patterns for date, time and datetime formats in the XML schema or apply the default ones, which will comply with the W3C XML Schema 1.1 specification (for details, refer to the page http://www.w3.org/TR/2004/REC-xmlschema-2-20041028/datatypes.html#dateTime). See the following contents of the section to know more about the customized format patterns.

Customized format patterns

You can specify the date, time and datetime formats in XML schema by the date, time and datetime pattern strings or customize the format pattern by the Format Pattern dialog. In the dialog, the pattern string you select from the Pattern String list box will be interpreted, and the delimiter that you input will not be interpreted. Any character is acceptable and it will be quoted if necessary.

Within date, time and datetime pattern strings in the XML schema, unquoted letters from A to Z and from a to z are interpreted as pattern letters representing the components of a date, time or datetime string. Text can be quoted using single quotes (') to avoid interpretation. '' represents a single quote. All other characters are not interpreted; they're simply copied into the output string during formatting or matched against the input string during parsing the XML schema.

DateTime format patterns

A format pattern consists of some pattern strings and delimiters. The following pattern strings that JReport Designer provides you to use in the format pattern: G, yyyy, yy, MMMM, MM, dd, D, WW, ww, F, E, a, HH, kk, KK, hh, mm, ss, SSS, z, Z.

The following table describes the detail information of the pattern strings listed above:

Letter Date Component Presentation Examples
G Era designator Text AD
y Year Year 1996; 96
M Month in year Month July; Jul; 07
w Week in year Number 27
D Day in year Number 189
d Day in month Number 10
F Day of week in month Number 2
E Day in Week Text Tuesday; Tue
a Am/pm marker Text PM
H Hour in day (0-23) Number 0
k Hour in day (1-24) Number 24
K Hour in am/pm (0-11) Number 0
h Hour in am/pm (1-12) Number 12
m Minute in hour Number 30
s Second in minute Number 55
S Millisecond Number 978
z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800

Format pattern also supports localized date, time and datetime pattern strings. In these strings, the text presentation of pattern letters described in the above table may be varied with the locale.

Date format patterns

The representation of the format pattern for date data type in XML schema is same as datetime but the pattern strings are less than it. Only the following strings can be used: G, yyyy, yy, MMMM, MM, dd, D, WW, ww, F, E.

Time format patterns

The representation of the format pattern for time data type in XML schema is same as datetime but the pattern strings are less than it. Only the following strings can be used: a, HH, kk, KK, hh, mm, ss, SSS, z, Z.