ColdFusion Programming/dates

Coldfusion can handle the creation, modification, display, and usage of dates.

Setting a Date

In order to set a date use the cfset function.

<cfset mydate = '12/3/2006'>

Displaying a Date

The basic display of a date is simply to output it.

<cfoutput>#mydate#</cfoutput>

This would display: 12/3/2006

There is function that allows you to easily convert a date into another format.

<cfoutput>#dateformat(mydate, 'yyyy/mm/dd')#</cfoutput>

This would display: 2006/12/3

The options to be used here are:

• d: Day of the month as digits, no leading zeros
• dd: Day of the month as digits
• ddd: Day of the week, abbr.
• dddd: Day of the week, name
• m: Month as digits, no leading zero
• mm: Month as digits
• mmm: Month as abbr.
• mmmm: Month as name.
• y: Year - last two digits, no leading zeros
• yy: Year - last two digits
• yyyy: Year - four digits

The options can be separated by - / , or space to create the format that you want.

Modifying a date

If we want to add 5 days to today we would use this function.

<cfset todayplus5 = dateadd('d', 5, now())> 

The options for dateadd are:

• yyyy: Year
• q: Quarter
• m: Month
• y: Day of year
• d: Day
• w: Weekday
• ww: Week
• h: Hour
• n: Minute (remember m is for month not minute)
• s: Second