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Date Formatting

In addition to standard EE date formatting, Calendar supports easy-to-use text format versions of dates for all parameters that accept date values. Text dates are relative to today. So for example, you can specify dates like this:

  • today
  • tomorrow
  • yesterday
  • X day(s) (where X is a number of days greater than or equal to 1)
  • X week(s) (where X is a number of weeks greater than or equal to 1)
  • X month(s) (where X is a number of months greater than or equal to 1)
  • X year(s) (where X is a number of years greater than or equal to 1)

So to display all events that fall within today’s date, up to 3 months in the future, you can do something like this:

date_range_start="today" date_range_end="3 months"
  • The word ago can also be appended to refer to dates in the past. For example, 1 week means one week from today, while 1 week ago means one week ago.
  • +5 days / -5 days (days, weeks, months, years / begin, end)
    • Preceding the number with + will look into the future, while - into the past.
    • The number can be any integer.
    • Any of days, weeks, months, or years can be provided.
    • An optional begin or end suffix may be added for weeks, months, and years. Doing so will adjust the date to the first or last day of the week, month, or year.

So to display all events that fall within today’s date, up to 5 days into the future, you can do something like this:

date_range_start="today" date_range_end="+5 days"
  • YYYYMMDD
  • YYYY-MM-DD
  • MM-DD-YYYY
  • MM/DD/YYYY
  • year-month-day
  • When using either YYYY-MM-DD or MM-DD-YYYY, you may replace one or more of the numeric values with the literal words year, month, and/or day. Calendar will then replace that word with the relevant value for the current date. Examples:
    • year-12-25 = Christmas Day in the current year.
    • 2004-month-15 = The fifteenth day of the current month in 2004.
  • The literal value year-month-day is equivalent to “today”.
  • You may use the word “last” instead of “day”. Doing so will set the date to the final day of the relevant month. Examples:
    • 2010-02-last = February 28, 2010.
    • 2012-02-last = February 29, 2010
    • year-month-last = The last day of the current month of the current year.

​Time Formatting

Calendar takes a somewhat unconventional approach to Time Formatting. Rather than specifying a date/time like this YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM AM, you actually need to specify it like this YYYY-MM-DD @ HH:MM AM (with [space] @ [space] seperating the date and the time). You can also call Times in a variety of formats and easy-to-use text format versions. So for example, you can specify dates like this:

  • @ now
  • @ noon
  • @ midnight (start of day, not end of day)
  • @ 0800 (four digits, 24h time)
  • @ 16:00 (24h time)
  • @ 8:00 am (am/pm time)

So some complete formatting examples would look like:

date_range_start="yesterday @ noon" date_range_end="today @ 5:00 pm"
date_range_start="today @ midnight" date_range_end="2 weeks @ 8:00 pm"
date_range_start="2010-02-01 @ 0800" date_range_end="2010-02-last @ 1600"
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