Formatting strings

[Nige]

I'm a complete novice to JS. I want to insert the date and time into a
document in the format:

WB-MMDDHHmm

Where:

WB- is a fixed string prefix (the whole string is a reference number)
MM is the month 01 to 12, with a leading 0 if required
DD is the day 01 to 31, with a leading 0 if required
HH is the hour 00 to 23, with a leading 0 if required
mm is the minute 00 to 59, with a leading 0 if required
I've got this far:
<script language="JavaS cript">

function ShowDateTime()
{
var today = new Date();
var mo=today.getMon th()+1;
var da=today.getDat e();
var ho=today.getHou rs();
var mi=today.getMin utes();

# parse here #

document.write( "WB-"+mo+da+ho+ mi);
}

</script>
The problem is the bit to parse the strings, I've tried

if (mo.length < 2) mo="0"+mo; ... etc

but it doesn't work.

Help!
--
Nige

Please replace YYYY with the current year
ille quis mortem cum maximus ludos, vincat

[Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn]

Lasse Reichstein Nielsen wrote:

Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <Po*********@we b.de> writes:

In contrast, in older UAs like Opera 6 (IIRC), `location' stores
only a primitive string value.
YRI (You Remember Incorrectly :)

Having just installed Opera 6.0 again [1], I realize that you are both
right *and* wrong! :-)

I remembered correctly, *but* my testing method was in fact flawed:
From the fact that Opera's `location' shows no properties when iterating
through them with `for (var p in location)', I falsely concluded that it
has none and is therefore no object at all.[2] But as you wrote, it is of
type `object' and has at least `href', `search' and `protocol' properties
(when I think about it, Opera won't have distributed this much if it had not.)

Because you cannot rely on what iteration shows, is there a way to get
all properties of an object other than brute force, and if that, how it
is done?
In Opera 4, 5 and 6, location is an object.
It is in v6, and most certainly is in v4 and v5.
I don't have Opera 3 installed,
See [1].
The same goes for Netscape 4 and 3.
ACK

> There is some magic to the location object, though, since *assigning*
> to it will really assign to location.href.

There is no magic involved :) See
http://devedge.netscape.com/library/.../location.html

Tha qualified as "magic" to me (something that depends on internal
code and cannot be implemented by a Javscript programmer,

OK. I don't consider things described in specifications "magic".
It says:
---
If you assign a string to the location property of an object,
JavaScript creates a location object and assigns that string to its
href property.
---
That is not correct for *any* object. The following gives me "string":
---
var x = {}; // or var x=document.body ;
x.location = "foo";
typeof x.location
---
So, it is only for window objects, not any object.

It also says:

| The location object is contained by the window object and is within its
| scope. If you refer to a location object without specifying a window, the
| location object represents the current location. If you refer to a
| location object and specify a window name, as in windowReference .location,
| the location object represents the location of the specified window.

and BTW, your `x' is not a Location object.

> As a curiosity, in Opera 7 the location.valueO f method is the same
> as the location.toStri ng.

Same in Mozilla/5.0 and IE 6.0 SP-1, as expected.

In my IE 6, the location object doesn't have a valueOf property.

Oops! Me too. Debug bug. System halted.
PointedEars
___________
[1] <http://arc.opera.com/pub/opera/>
[2] <http://pointedears.de. vu/scripts/test/location.html>

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn <Po*********@we b.de> writes:

Because you cannot rely on what iteration shows, is there a way to get
all properties of an object other than brute force, and if that, how it
is done?
No. You can only get the enumerable properties. For the rest, you must
do a brute force search (i.e., you can't in practice).

In Opera, only methods are generally enumerable, and not even all of
them. The enumerable properties of O7's location object are:
assign, reload, replace, toString, and valueOf
As you say, in O6, there are no enumerable properties.

I don't have Opera 3 installed,

See [1].

I have it, it's just not installed right now :)
It also says:

| The location object is contained by the window object and is within its
| scope. If you refer to a location object without specifying a window, the
| location object represents the current location. If you refer to a
| location object and specify a window name, as in windowReference .location,
| the location object represents the location of the specified window.
That just sounds like normal scope rules when the "current" window object
is also the global object of the execution context. Location objects are
just properties of window objects.
and BTW, your `x' is not a Location object.

Nope. But they did say that if you assigned to the location property
of an object, it would create a location object in its place. Apparenty
it is only true for window objects.

/L
--
Lasse Reichstein Nielsen - lr*@hotpop.com
DHTML Death Colors: <URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/rasterTriangleD OM.html>
'Faith without judgement merely degrades the spirit divine.'

[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <20************ *************** @mb-m20.aol.com>, seen in
news:comp.lang. javascript, HikksNotAtHome <hi************ @aol.com>
posted at Thu, 6 Nov 2003 21:35:14 :-

I have no problem with it. I dont recieve the mails (If I do, they get
deleted), so I fail to see how Usenet is a "private" place. As I said, don't
try to email someone, no problems. Trying to get outside of the public Usenet
into private Email is crossing a boundary that I don't care to cross. It opens
up too many problems. If the "Netiquette " says its ok, I don't care, I don't do
it and I won't do it.

It is possible that AOL may have problems with it; certainly they
should. If Mr. H Ikksnot gets a couple of AOL accounts, one for use at
work and the other at home, he may be disgruntled to receive your spam.

One should not use an address that may cause mail to be directed to an
account, extant or otherwise, that one does not have positive permission
to use.

Different providers, however, do actually state different, or no,
conditions; presumably depending on a combination of their corporate
intelligence and public-spiritedness.

It is possible that AOL may have created, or be willing to create, some
range or ranges of left parts that will not be allowed for customers and
can therefore be offered for your purpose; they would then probably
arrange to bounce or dump all messages to that range efficiently.

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon. co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME ©
Web <URL:http://www.uwasa.fi/~ts/http/tsfaq.html> -> Timo Salmi: Usenet Q&A.
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/news-use.htm> : about usage of News.
No Encoding. Quotes before replies. Snip well. Write clearly. Don't Mail News.

[Nige]

In comp.lang.javas cript, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:

My only problem now is how to extract this from the document.locati on
property (it is there). I've tried code the parse the string to write
the last 8 digits, and code to find the "?" and write the remainder.

That has nothing to do with CGI as you have told before!

No, indeed, it was my flawed understanding of the object returned from
the .location property. All sorted now.

Next year I'm going to be teaching a university course that involves JS,
all I have to do is stay one step ahead of the students ;-)
--
Nige

Please replace YYYY with the current year
ille quis mortem cum maximus ludos, vincat

[Richard Cornford]

"Lasse Reichstein Nielsen" <lr*@hotpop.com > wrote in message
news:65******** **@hotpop.com.. .

Because you cannot rely on what iteration shows, is there a
way to get all properties of an object other than brute force,
and if that, how it is done?

No. You can only get the enumerable properties. For the rest,
you must do a brute force search (i.e., you can't in practice).

<snip>

Do you really mean you can't in practice? Certainly it would not be
practical to test every combination of character sequence that could be
a property name (the end on the universe would arrive before the
results), but I don't see a problem with trying each item in a list of
likely property names against an object to see which return
non-undefined values. Then the usefulness of the results only depends on
the quality of the list of likely property names. It wouldn't be quick
but it wouldn't be so slow as to be impractical.

Richard.

[Lasse Reichstein Nielsen]

"Richard Cornford" <Ri*****@litote s.demon.co.uk> writes:

Do you really mean you can't in practice? Certainly it would not be
practical to test every combination of character sequence that could
be a property name (the end on the universe would arrive before the
results),
Find them all, no. It is indeed the heat death of the Universe that
prevents that.
but I don't see a problem with trying each item in a list of likely
property names against an object to see which return non-undefined
values.
Absolutely possible. Later versions of Javascript even has a way
to check whether an object has a property ("foo" in obj).
Then the usefulness of the results only depends on the
quality of the list of likely property names. It wouldn't be quick
but it wouldn't be so slow as to be impractical.

If you know what to look for, it is easier to find it :)

/L
--
Lasse Reichstein Nielsen - lr*@hotpop.com
DHTML Death Colors: <URL:http://www.infimum.dk/HTML/rasterTriangleD OM.html>
'Faith without judgement merely degrades the spirit divine.'

[Dr John Stockton]

JRS: In article <dt************ *************** *****@4ax.com>, seen in
news:comp.lang. javascript, Nige <uY***@ntlworld .com> posted at Fri, 7
Nov 2003 10:47:29 :-

In comp.lang.javas cript, Thomas 'PointedEars' Lahn wrote:

Time zones don't enter into it, all users are in the UK.

I wonder how you can be sure.

Because it is a campaign site for broadband in Kent.

I am reliably informed that there is a modicum of Kent that keeps Paris
Time. However, they are probably not possible direct customers for the
broadband service. And if they were, they might be customers best
avoided (on mere pragmatic grounds; nothing uncomplimentary ).

--
© John Stockton, Surrey, UK. ?@merlyn.demon. co.uk Turnpike v4.00 MIME. ©
Web <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/> - w. FAQish topics, links, acronyms
PAS EXE etc : <URL:http://www.merlyn.demo n.co.uk/programs/> - see 00index.htm
Dates - miscdate.htm moredate.htm js-dates.htm pas-time.htm critdate.htm etc.