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!