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 Pattern 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 Fragments 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

Year
The pattern string of year can be formatted as two types - yyyy and yy:
- If the pattern string - yyyy is used to format year, the year will be interpreted literally, regardless of the number of digits. Therefore, if the pattern MM/dd/yyyy is used, 08/25/22 will be parsed to Aug 25, 22 A.D.
- If the abbreviated pattern string - yy is used to format year, the abbreviated year relative to some century must be interpreted. To do this, dates will be adjusted to be within 80 years before and 20 years after the current time. For example, a pattern of MM/dd/yy and the current time is Aug 25, 1998, the string 05/21/15 would be interpreted as May 21, 2015 while the string 06/02/88 would be interpreted as Jun 2, 1988.
When the year string of a datetime data in the XML schema is parsing, only strings consisting of exactly two digits will be parsed into the default century. Any other numeric string, such as a one-digit string, a three or more digit string, or a two-digit string but one is a sign (for example, -2), is interpreted literally. So 03/06/4 or 03/06/004 is parsed, using the pattern of MM/dd/yy, as Mar 6, 4 AD. Also, 03/06/-4 is parsed as Mar 6, 5 BC.

Month
If the pattern string is MMMM, the month is interpreted as text; if the pattern string is MM, the month will be interpreted as a number.
General time zone
Time zones are interpreted as text if they have names. For time zones representing a GMT offset value, the following syntax is used:
GMTOffsetTimeZone: GMT Sign Hours: Minutes Sign: one of + - Hours: Digit Digit Digit Minutes: Digit Digit Digit: one of 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
Hours must be between 0 and 23, and Minutes must be between 00 and 59.

RFC 822 time zone:

RFC822TimeZone:
   Sign TwoDigitHours Minutes
TwoDigitHours:
   Digit Digit

TwoDigitHours must be between 00 and 23.

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.