Converting time to remedial human form?

Questions / Help
1

The Elixir docs on time have a ton of choices:
https://hexdocs.pm/elixir/main/DateTime.html

I want something like

3/11/23 5:22 pm

Does anyone have a suggestion as to where I can direct my attention to? I’m assuming their are modules to help with this, and that I don’t need to code up a 100 percent solution from unix time from scratch.

2

Hi @wktdev the function you’re looking for is Calendar — Elixir v1.14.3

Give it a whirl and let me know if you run into snags.

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3

Do I do something like this:

date_capture = DateTime.utc_now()

strftime(date_capture, string_format, user_options \\ [])

I’ve just thrown in the towel attempting to read Elixir documentation.
I have no idea what the string format syntax is or the user_options.

If the docs had an example I could copy and paste and get a working output from , I could work backwards quickly.

I don’t know what the caveats like this mean:

if you use %Y to format the year, the datetime must have the :year field

Again, there are no examples to work from - so there is no context.

4

Try Calendar — Elixir v1.15.0-dev for examples.

Edit: the link looks just like I changed the version, but it’s actually #anchored a ways down the page to the right function, ‘strftime’. There are examples like:

iex> Calendar.strftime(~U[2019-08-26 13:52:06.0Z], "%a, %B %d %Y")
"Mon, August 26 2019"
5

When I said example I mean working example where I can paste something in the console and see a result.

Like this:

The MDN documentation is designed to ride the grain of how people actually learn.

6

Oh I see. There is an example but it’s down at the bottom of the page.

7

Right, in this case the function has relatively long documentation, because there are a lot of options. If you scroll through all of it for that function you’ll see plenty of examples.

8

I’ve run into this myself. Examples are further down the page, and the exceptions/caveats – the most useful fact given the problem I’m facing at times (!) – is the last sentence of the docs.

9

Yeah I think the docs for Calendar.strftime/3 could be improved. I’m hoping that making it more clear that the Options section is really about the user_options argument it will make it easier to ignore the Options section and focus on the “Formats”.

So I’ve created a PR that will hopefully make it easier to read/scan/grok the Calendar.strftime/3 docs:

P.S. I also thought about putting an example up higher in the docs but I’m not aware of any other function doc that does that (although perhaps one does exist).

Edit: and the PR is now merged, and it includes an example much further up in the docs :tada:

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