Time And Date

This guide provides examples for time and date formats on a Jekyll site that can be used for J1 Theme. The examples provided on this page are tested code snippets for displaying several date formats on a Jekyll site. They should also work on Jekyll-based GitHub Pages, or anything else that uses the Liquid template engine.

Predefined Date Filters

The examples provided on this page are tested code snippets for displaying several date formats on a Jekyll site. They should also work on Jekyll-based GitHub Pages, or anything else that uses the Liquid template engine.

More details of the Template Engine Liquid can be found on page Liquid User Guide.

Displaying Time and Date is done for example by using the Liquid output markup like:

{{ page.date }}

With no other alteration, a Date string generated looks something like:

2022-01-01 00:00:00 +0000

If there are designs that use that format, they are few and far between. Creating friendlier-looking dates is done by applying Liquid’s date filter. For example, the filter combination:

{{ page.date | date: '%B %d, %Y' }}

produces more reader-friendly date like so:

January 01, 2022

The following set of Liquid date filters solves common issues in formatting strings for Date/Time and explores a few other formatting options. Each one provides a solution for a specific display format.

Liquid supports some standard filter to define common date formats.

Table 1. Predefined Date Filters
Filter	Markup	Example
`date_to_string`	page.date \| date_to_string	01 Jan 2022
`date_to_long_string`	page.date \| date_to_long_string	01 January 2022
`date_to_xmlschema`	page.date \| date_to_xmlschema	2022-01-01T01:00:00+01:00
`date_to_rfc822`	page.date \| date_to_rfc822	Sat, 01 Jan 2022 01:00:00 +0100

Combined Date Filters

Beside predefined date formats, the filter date: accepts all formatting pattern defined in the ISO 8601 standard. Find very common Time and Date formats below.

Table 2. Combined Date Filters
Filter	Markup	Example
`ISO 8601 Date`	page.date \| date: '%Y-%m-%d'	2022-01-01
`Four digit Year`	page.date \| date: '%m/%d/%Y'	01/01/2022
`Two digit Year`	page.date \| date: '%-m/%-d/%y'	1/1/22
`Full Month name`	page.date \| date: '%B %-d, %Y'	January 1, 2022
`Non-US full Month name`	page.date \| date: '%-d %B %Y'	1 January 2022
`Full Month name`	page.date \| date: '%B %-d, %Y'	January 1, 2022
`Full Day and Month name`	page.date \| date: '%A, %B %-d, %Y'	Saturday, January 1, 2022

Much more formatting for Time and Date can be done using the date: filter. The next section offers a comprghensive list of patterns and pattern combinations to create Date and Time strings for every use case.

ISO 8601 Time and Date

This ISO 8601 standard helps remove doubts that can result from the various day–date conventions, cultures and time zones that impact a global operation. It gives a way of presenting dates and times that is clearly defined and understandable to both: people and machines.

Common ISO 8601 Time and Date pattern

Common ISO 8601 formats available for Time and Date.

Table 3. Common ISO 8601 Time and Date pattern
Format	Description	Example
`%Y-%m-%d` \| `%F`	Calendar date	1961-06-28
`%Y-%m`	Calendar date, specific month	1969-09
`%Y`	Calendar date, specific year	1987
`%C`	Calendar date, specific century	19
`%Y-%j`	Ordinal date	1963-247
`%G-W%V-%u`	Week date	1996-W12-5
`%G-W%V`	Week date, specific week	1959-W36
`%H:%M:%S` \| `%T`	Local time, full	00:00:00
`%H:%M`	Local time, reduced	00:00
`%H`	Local time, specific hour	00
`%T,%L`	Local time with decimal fraction, comma as decimal sign	00:00:00
`%T.%L`	Local time with decimal fraction, full stop as decimal sign	00:00:00.000
`%T%:z`	Local time and the difference from UTC	00:00:00+01:00
`%FT%T%:z`	Date and time of day for calendar date	1963-01-01T00:00:00+01:00
`%Y-%jT%T%:z`	Date and time of day for ordinal date	`1952-019T00:00:00+01:00
`%G-W%V-%uT%T%:z`	Date and time of day for week date	1979-W01-1T00:00:00+01:00
`%FT%R`	Calendar date and local time	1963-12-03T00:00
`%Y-%jT%RZ`	Ordinal date and UTC of day	1956-344T00:00Z
`%G-W%V-%uT%R%:z`	Week date and local time and difference from UTC	1978-W47-6T00:00+01:00

Year, Month, and Day

Year, Month, and Day shortcuts of ISO 8601.

Table 4. Year, Month, and Day pattern
Format	Description	Example
`%Y`	Year with century if provided, will pad result at least 4 digits	1978
`%C`	Year / 100 (rounded down such as 20 in 2022)	20
`%y`	Year % 100 (00..99)	66
`%m`	Month of the year, zero-padded (01..12)	01
`%-m`	Month of the year, no padding (1..12)	5
`%B`	The full month name	January
`%^B`	The full month name uppercase	NOVEMBER
`%b`	The abbreviated month name	Feb
`%^b`	The abbreviated month name uppercase	JUL
`%h`	%h - Equivalent to %b	Nov
`%d`	Day of the month, zero-padded (01..31)	12
`%-d` \| `%e`	Day of the month, no padding (1..31)	22
`%j`	Day of the year (001..365)	146
`%-j`	Day of the year no padding (1..365)	273

Hour, Minute, and Second

Hour, Minute, Second and Subsecond shortcuts of ISO 8601.

Format Description Example

%H

Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, zero-padded (00..23)

%k

Hour of the day, 24-hour clock, blank-padded (0..23)

%I

Hour of the day, 12-hour clock, zero-padded (01..12)

%l

Hour of the day, 12-hour clock, blank-padded (1..12)

%p

Meridian indicator, uppercase (AM or PM)

%P

Meridian indicator, lowercase (am or pm)

%M

Minute of the hour (00..59)

%S

Second of the minute (00..60)

%L

Millisecond of the second (000..999). The digits under millisecond are truncated to not produce 1000.

000

%N

Fractional seconds digits, default is 9 digits (nanosecond).

%3N millisecond (3 digits)
%6N microsecond (6 digits)
%9N nanosecond (9 digits)
%12N picosecond (12 digits)
%15N femtosecond (15 digits)
%18N attosecond (18 digits)
%21N zeptosecond (21 digits)
%24N yoctosecond (24 digits)

The digits under the specified length are truncated to avoid carry up.

000000000

Time zone

Time zone shortcuts of ISO 8601.

Table 6. Time zone shortcuts
Format	Description	Example
`%z`	Time zone as hour and minute offset from UTC	+0100
`%:z`	Hour and minute offset from UTC with a colon	+01:00
`%::z`	Hour, minute and second offset from UTC	+01:00:00
`%Z`	Abbreviated time zone name or similar information. NOTE: The abbreviated time zone name is OS dependent.	CEST

Weekday

Weekday shortcuts of ISO 8601.

Format Description Example

%A

The full weekday name

Wednesday

%^A

The full weekday name uppercase

SATURDAY

%a

The abbreviated weekday name

Thu

%^a

The abbreviated weekday name uppercase

MON

%u

Day of the week (1..7)

Monday is 1

%w

Day of the week (0..6)

Sunday is 0

Week number

The first week of YYYY that starts with a Sunday or Monday (according to %U or %W). The days in the year before the first week are in week 0.

Table 8. Week number
Format	Description	Example
`%U`	Week number of the year. The week starts with Sunday. (00..53)	35
`%W`	Week number of the year. The week starts with Monday. (00..53)	19

Seconds since the Epoch

The Unix epoch is the number of seconds that have elapsed since January 1, 1970 at midnight UTC time minus the leap seconds. This means that at midnight of January 1, 1970, Unix time was 0.

Table 9. Seconds since the Epoch
Format	Description	Example
`%s`	Number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.	1659715076, means 5. August 2022 15:57:29

Literal strings

For formatting time and date strings, the following literal strings are available.

Table 10. Literal strings
Format	Description	Example
`%n`	Newline character (\n)	\n
`%t`	Tab character (\t)	\t
`%%`	Literal % character	%

Predefined Time and Date pattern

Some common Time and Date pattern are available as predefined pattern combinations.

Table 11. Predefined Time and Date pattern
Format	Description	Example
`%c`	Date and Time (%a %b %e %T %Y)	Sat Apr 20 00:00:00 1968
`%D`	Date (%m/%d/%y)	09/16/82
`%F`	The ISO 8601 Date format (%Y-%m-%d)	2007-05-08
`%R`	24-hour Time (%H:%M)	00:00
`%T`	24-hour Time (%H:%M:%S)	00:00:00
`%x`	Same as %D (%m/%d/%y)	03/18/55
`%X`	Same as %T (%H:%M:%S)	00:00:00