Documentation
Intermediate

Date and Number Localization

Different countries and regions have their own rules for writing dates, numbers and monetary units. All these issues should be taken in account in case a target group for your app is wider than one country or region.

The set of rules for this or that country is called locale and includes methods for date, time, number and price formatting. Localization methods belong to the i18n class and treat data according to he set format.

By default Date() constructor outputs raw data. Unformatted, it looks barely readable.

new Date(2012,10,30); //-->Tue Nov 30 2010 00:00:00

Date and time should be formatted either with Date or i18n class.

Numbers differ by delimiter before the fractional part and between thousands while prices should be rendered with an appropriate currency mark. Formatting is done either in the Number or i18n class.

Built-in Locales

The standard package of the Webix library includes 9 locales, namely:

  • 'en-US' - North American (used by default);
  • 'ru-RU' - Russian;
  • 'fr-FR' - French;
  • 'ja-JP' - Japanise;
  • 'be-BY' - Belorussian;
  • 'de-DE' - German;
  • 'es-ES' - Spanish;
  • 'it-IT' - Italian;
  • 'zh-CN' - Chinese.

Webix Pro edition includes over 300 locales to match a great variety of cultures.

Locale Structure

The way formatted date is presented depends on locale you use. Locale is a set of rules for dates, numbers and price units for this or that region or country. By default en-US locale is used.

en-US Locale

webix.i18n.locales["en-US"]={
  groupDelimiter:",",
  groupSize:3,
  decimalDelimiter:".",
  decimalSize:2,
 
  dateFormat:"%m/%d/%Y",
  timeFormat:"%h:%i %A",
  longDateFormat:"%d %F %Y",
  fullDateFormat:"%m/%d/%Y %h:%i %A",
 
  price:"${obj}",
  priceSettings:{
     groupDelimiter:",",
     groupSize:3,
     decimalDelimiter:".",
     decimalSize:2
  },
  fileSize: ["b","Kb","Mb","Gb","Tb","Pb","Eb"],
 
  calendar: {
    monthFull:["January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", 
        "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"
    ],
    monthShort:["Jan", "Feb", "Mar", "Apr", "May", "Jun", "Jul", "Aug", 
        "Sep", "Oct", "Nov", "Dec"
    ],
    dayFull:["Sunday", "Monday", "Tuesday", "Wednesday", "Thursday", 
        "Friday", "Saturday"
    ],
    dayShort:["Sun", "Mon", "Tue", "Wed", "Thu", "Fri", "Sat"],
    hours: "Hours",
    minutes: "Minutes",
    done:"Done",
    clear: "Clear",
    today: "Today"
  },
 
  controls:{
    select:"Select"
  }
};

Numbers:

  • groupDelimiter (string) - a stop mark to divide number groups;
  • groupSize (number) - the number of digits in each group. Typically it's 3 since thousands are the most frequent group;
  • decimalDelimiter - a stop mark to divide even number from fractional part;
  • decimalSize (number) - the number of digits in the fractional part;

Date and Time:

  • dateFormat, longDateFormat, fullDateFormat - define the way day, month and year look in stated modes;
  • timeFormat - defines the way hours, minutes and seconds look.

Start Date:

By default, a week in the calendar starts on Sunday. However, you can set any day as a start day using the webix.Date.startOnMonday property

webix.Date.startOnMonday = true;

Price states monetary unit applied to the data from data object ({obj}).

Calendar:

  • monthFull, dayFull (string) - an array of full and short month names for this location;
  • monthShort, dayShort (string) - an array of full and short day names for this location.

When formatted to a short/long date, the date from the first snippet looks like this:

Formatted with en-US locale

format:webix.i18n.dateFormatStr
    //--> 11/30/2010
 
format:webix.i18n.longDateFormatSt
    // --> 30 November 2010
  • hours, minutes - localization options for 'Hours', 'Minutes', 'Done' labels in the calendar.
  • today, clear - configuration for "Today" and "Clear" buttons, used for selection of current date and removing selection

Controls

Text labels for some parts of webix components that are more likely to be changed in a scope:

  • select - text label of the 'Select' button of the multisuggest (used in multiselect input, editor and filter). The default value for North Americal locale is "Select".

Applying a Locale

Locales other than en-US should be set manually. It can be done with the help of a setLocale() function that takes locale name as parameter.

webix.i18n.setLocale("fr-FR");

After this any method applied to the webix.i18n object will redraw date, and numbers according to the rules described in locale.

Formatted with fr-FR locale

format:webix.i18n.dateFormatStr 
    // -->30/11/2010
 
format:webix.i18n.longDateFormatStr 
    // --> 30 Novembre 2010

Altering a Locale

To change one or several parameters for the current locale, you need to redefine them and then apply the same locale so that your changes come into force:

webix.i18n.fullDateFormat = "%Y-%m-%d %H:%i";
webix.i18n.setLocale(); //locale name is not specified here

Setting Localized i18n Format

Localization is done via the i18n class and allows setting customized formats gathered under one and the same locale.

In case of datatable, format is stated by the dedicated format parameter while data is specified by column ID:

{ header:"Date",  id:"start", format:webix.i18n.dateFormatStr},
{ header:"Price", id:"price", format:webix.i18n.priceFormat}

Related sample:  Internationalization

Other components like list, dataview and Tree have quite the other way of data presenting. To ensure proper formatting, you should make use of a template function:

template:function(obj){ 
    return webix.i18n.longDateFormatStr(obj.start)+"<br/>"+
       webix.i18n.priceFormat(obj.price);
}

The format in use is defined by current locale. EN-US (default) locale sets dateFormatStr as "%m/%d/%Y" while price format is set as "{obj}currency" where obj is price value.

Related sample:  Dataview Formatting

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