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Active Server Pages: Displaying Date, Time and Text

Displaying the Current Date and Time

The date and time described in this section are those that are on the server.

Date

To display the current date by itself in a Web page, type: 
<% =date %>
at the point where you want it to appear. When you view the page in your browser, you should see something like this:

Thu, Jan 23, 1997

Note: Even though "=date" is a short script, it's actually made up of two parts. The "date" part tells the server, "Get me the date." The equal sign (=) tells the server to display the date in the Web page. If you typed just: 

<% date %>
the server would get the current date from your system, but that's all. It wouldn't display it. There are times when it makes sense to use an ASP function without the equal sign.

Time

To display the current time by itself, type: 
<% =time %>
where you want it to appear. When you view the page, you should see something like this:

4:19:46 PM

Now (Date and Time)

To display the current date and time, type: 
<% =now %>
where you want them to appear. When you view the page, you should see something like this:

1/23/97 4:19:46 PM

Changing the Way Date and Time are Displayed

You can also use Active Server Pages (ASP) functions to customize the way the current date and time are displayed on your Web page. To do this, use the now function together with the following formatting functions.

Month and Monthname

To display the number of the current month in a Web page, type: 
<% =month(now) %>
where you want it to appear. When you view the page in your browser, you'll see a 1 if the current month is January, 2 if it's February, and so on.

To display the name of the current month, type: 

<% =monthname(month(now)) %>
where you want it to appear.

Day

To display the day of the current month, type: 
<% =day(now) %>
where you want it to appear. When you view the page, you'll see a number between 1 and 31.

Year

To display the current year, type: 
<% =year(now) %>
where you want it to appear.

Example

Suppose you wanted to display today's date as day/month/year instead of month/day/year. To do so, you would use the day, month, and year ASP functions together, by typing: 
<% =day(now) %>/<% =month(now) %>/<% =year(now) %>
When you viewed the page, you would see something like this:

23/1/1997

Later we'll see how you can change this so only the last two digits of the year are displayed, like this:

23/1/97

Weekday and Weekdayname

To display the day of the week as a number from 1 to 7 in a Web page, type: 
<% =weekday(now) %>
where you want it to appear. When you view the page in Internet Explorer, you'll see a 1 if today is Sunday, 2 if it's Monday, and so on.

To display the day of the week by name, type: 

<% =weekdayname(weekday(now)) %>
where you want it to appear.

Hour, Minute, and Second

To display just the hour part of the current time, type: 
<% =hour(now) %>
where you want it to appear. The hour function is based on a 24-hour clock. When you view the page, you'll see a number between 0 and 23.

To display just the minutes part of the current time, type: 

<% =minute(now) %>
where you want it to appear. When you view the page, you'll see a number between 0 and 59.

To display just the seconds part of the current time, type: 

<% =second(now) %>
where you want it to appear. When you view the page, you'll see a number between 0 and 59.

Example

Try typing this into a Web page: 
The time is <% =time %>. That means it's <% =minute(now) %> 
minutes past <% =hour(now) %> o'clock.
When you view the page in Internet Explorer, you should see something like this:

The time is 1:36:05 PM. That means it's 36 minutes past 13 o'clock.

Remember, the hour function is based on a 24-hour clock. Later we'll see how to convert from the 24-hour clock to a 12-hour clock.

Timevalue

You probably won't ever use the timevalue function. It takes the different ways you can write the time, such as "2:24PM" and "14:24," and returns them in this format: "2:24:00 PM." This can be useful if you're using a function that needs to be given the time in that exact format.

Example

Earlier in this section we saw how you can use the hour, minute, and second functions to break up the time into hours, minutes, and seconds. With the timevalue function, you can put them back together. Type this into a Web page: 
When it's 23 minutes and 5 seconds past 4 o'clock in the afternoon,
that means it's <% =timevalue("16:23:05") %>.
This is the same as <% =timevalue("4:23:05PM") %>
or <% =timevalue("16:23:05PM") %>.
Make sure you type "16:23:05PM" and not "16:23:05 PM." The "05" and the "PM." should be run together, not separated by a space. When you view the page in Internet Explorer, you should see:

When it's 23 minutes and 5 seconds past 4 o'clock in the afternoon, that means it's 4:23:05 PM. This is the same as 4:23:05 PM or 4:23:05 PM.

Displaying Text

len

The len function tells you how many characters are in a word or sequence of words. (The name "len" is an abbreviation of "length.") All characters are counted, including the space character. For example, to find the length of the sentence "The cat is on the mat," type this into a Web page: 
There are <% =len("The cat is on the mat.") %> characters in 
"The cat is on the mat."
When you view the page in Internet Explorer, you should see this:

There are 22 characters in "The cat is on the mat."

left

You can use the left function to look at the first few characters of a word or sequence of words. For example, to find the first character of "Frankenstein," type this into a Web page: 
"Frankenstein" begins with the letter <% =left("Frankenstein", 1) %>.
When you view the page, you should see this:

"Frankenstein" begins with the letter F.

right

To look at the last few characters of a word or sequence of words, use the right function. For example, to find the last three letters of "Wednesday," type this into a Web page: 
The last three letters of "Wednesday" are: <% =right("Wednesday", 3) %>.
When you view this page, you should see this:

The last three letters of "Wednesday" are: day.

Example

What if you wanted to take a few letters from the middle of something? How would you specify exactly where in the middle you wanted to be? For example, how would you take out just the "apple" part of the word "pineapples"?

You could start with the fifth character from the left and then stop at the second character from the right. Or you could do it the following way.

Try typing this into a Web page: 

<% =right("pineapples", 6) %> <% =left(right("pineapples", 6), 5) %>
This line takes the last six letters of the word "pineapples," which make up the word "apples." Then it takes the first five letters of the word "apples," which make up the word "apple."

When you view this page in Internet Explorer, you should see this:

apples apple

Then try typing this into a Web page: 

<% =left("pineapples", 9) %> <% =right(left("pineapples", 9), 5) %>
This line takes the first nine letters of the word "pineapples," which make up the word "pineapple." Then it takes the last five letters of the word "pineapple," which make up the word "apple."

When you view this page, you should see this:

pineapple apple

Cool Things You Can Do with Date, Time, and Text

Here are some examples of interesting things you can do with date, time, and text functions.

Link of the Day

What if you wanted to have a link that pointed to a different page every day of the week? Here's how you can do that. First, choose the pages (HTML files) on your Web site that you want your link to point to. Name them "Sunday.htm," "Monday.htm," and so on. (If you don't have seven different HTML files, you can copy some of the files or make aliases on your Macintosh to them. The important thing is that there has to be one file or alias for every day of the week.)

To make the link, type 

<a href= <% =weekdayname(weekday(now)) %>.htm>Link of the Day</a>
where you want it to appear. When you click this link in Internet Explorer, it will take you to today's page.

Another Way to Display Today's Date

Earlier we saw how to change the date display from month/day/year to day/month/year like this:

23/1/1997

We can also change the date display so only the last two digits of the year are included. To do this, type 

<% =day(now) %>/<% =month(now) %>/<% =Right((year(now)), 2) %>
Now when you view the page, you should see something like this:

23/1/97

Another Way to Display the Time

In an earlier example, we wrote a server-side script to display the current time in words, such as: "The time is 36 minutes and 5 seconds past 13 o'clock." This script used the ASP hour function, which returns just the hour part of the current time, based on a 24-hour clock.

In this example, we'll see how to change 24-hour clock times such as "13 o'clock" to 12-hour clock times ("1 o'clock PM"). To do this, we'll need to make the server-side script that uses the hour function a little more complicated. Instead of 

<% =hour(now) %> o'clock
we'll need to write a script that looks at the hour and does one of the following: The script is shown below. It isn't written quite the way a programmer would write it, but it works, and it's fairly easy to understand, since it follows the items in the bulleted list above exactly. 
The hour is 
<% if hour(now) = 0 then %>
   midnight.
<% end if 
   if hour(now) = 12 then %>
  noon.
<% end if 
   if (hour(now) >= 1) and (hour(now) <= 11) then %>
    <% =hour(now) %> o'clock AM.
<% end if 
   if (hour(now) >= 13) and (hour(now) <= 23) then %>
    <% =hour(now) - 12 %> o'clock PM.
<% end if %>
If you type (or better yet, cut-and-paste) this script in a Web page, when you view the page, you should see something like this:

The hour is 4 o'clock PM.

 

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