Liquid Date Formatting and Templates

The Liquid date filter supports the following formatting options:

When using these formatting options you will use date: ahead of your formatting options. This is useful because Date fields are stored in a normalized format of YYYY-MM-DD and times are stored in a normalized military time format. If you want to send a subscriber their date type field in a specific format, in this case hour, minute, meridian indicuatr you would use the following:

{{first_name}}, just a reminder that your appointment is at {{appt_time | date: "%l:%M %p"}} at {{appt_address}}

Here is a similar example in the liquid tester:

Liquid Tester Template

Date Formatting Options

Date (Year, Month, Day):

%Y: 4 digit year
%y: 2 digit year
%m: month of the year, zero padded (02, 08, 11)
%_m: month of the year, blank padded ( 2, 8, 11)
%-m: month of the year, not padded (2,8,11)
%B: full month name (January)
%^B: uppercased full month name (JANUARY)
%b: abbreviated month name (Jan)
%^b: abbreviated, uppercased month name (JAN)
%d: day of the month, zero-padded (01, 04, 29)
%-d: day of the month not padded (1, 4, 29)
%e: day of the month, blank-padded ( 1, 4, 29)
%j: day of the year (001, 067, 365)

Time Formats (Hour, Minute, Second, Sub-second)

%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, lowercase (am, pm)
%P: meridian indicator, uppercase (am, pm)
%M: minute of the hour (00, 59)
%S: second of the minute (00, 59)

Time Zone:

%z - time zone as hour and minute offset from UTC ( +0900)
%:z - hour and minute offset from UTC with a colon (+09:00)
%::z - hour, minute and second offset from UTC (+09:00:00)
%:::z - hour, minute and second offset from UTC (+09, +09:30, +09:30:30)
%Z - timezone abbreviation name (UTC, PST)

Weekday:

%A: the full weekday name (Sunday)
%^A: the full weekday name uppercased (SUNDAY)
%a: the abbreviated weekday name (Sun)
%^a: the abbreviated weekday name (SUN)
%u: day of the week (Monday is 1, 1...7)
%w: day of the week (Sunday is 0, 0...6)

Combination:

%c: date and time (%a %b %e %T %Y)
%D: date (%m/%d/%y)
%F: the ISO 8601 date format (%Y-%m-%d)
%v: VMS date (%e-%b-%Y)
%x: same as %D
%X: same as %T
%r: 12-hour time (%I:%M:%S %p)
%R: 24-hour time (%H:%M)
%T: 24-hour time (%H:%M:%S)
%+: date(1) (%a %b %e %H:%M:%S %Z %Y)

ISO 8601 week-based year and week number:

The week 1 of YYYY starts with a Monday and includes YYYY-01-04. The days in the year before the first week are in the last week of the previous year.

%G: the week-based year
%g: the last 2 digits of the week-based year (00..99)
%V: week number of the week-based year (01..53)

Week number:

The week 1 of YYYY starts with a Sunday or Monday (according to %U or %W). The days in the year before the first week are in week 0.

%U: week number of the year. The week starts with Sunday. (00..53)
%W: week number of the year. The week starts with Monday. (00..53)

Seconds since the Unix Epoch:

%s: number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
%Q: number of microseconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.

Literal string:

%n: Newline character (\n)
%t: Tab character (\t)
%%: Literal ``%'' character

Relative Date Options

You can use templates with relative dates to send different messages to subscribers based on when a date is. Works in conjunction with date type fields.

{% if custom_date_field is_before '2016-07-04' %} Your date is before!{% endif %}
{% if custom_date_field is_after '2016-07-04' %} Your date is after! {% endif %}
{% if custom_date_field is_same_day_as '2016-07-04' %}Your date is the same day! {% endif %}

Relative date options include:

Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday
January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, November, December
Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall
Yesterday, Today, Tomorrow
Last Week, Next Week
This Tuesday (or any day of the week)
mon 2:35
this month, next month
last winter

Working with Dates

Check if a date is greater than 14 days away. Days are calculated using seconds: 14 days * 24 hours * 60 minutes * 60 seconds = 1209600

{% assign today = 'now' | date: '%s' %}

{% assign fourteen_days = 1209600 %}

{% assign fourteen_days_from_now = fourteen_days | plus: today | date: "%Y-%m-%d" %}

{% if my_date is_after fourteen_days_from_now %}

Your date is after 14 days from now.

{% else %}

Your date is before 14 days from now.

{% endif %}

Liquid_Tester

Check if we're currently outside business hours:

{% assign hour = 'now' | date: '%H' | plus: 0 %}

{% if hour > 8 and hour < 18 %}

We're in the office!

{% else %}

We're closed.

{% endif %}

Ask for birthdate and have liquid responses based on age. Here are the steps this chunk of Liquid is taking to make this assessment:

Capture the Current time and convert to seconds.
Convert the birth_date field into seconds.
Assign age based on dividing that by the amount of seconds in a year and comparing that against the time it is now.
Determine if that age is between 14 and 28.
Send one message, "Great, anyone between the ages of 14 and 28 can register!" to those subscribers between the ages of 14 and 28.
Send a different message, "You must be between 14 - 28 to register - sorry!" to those subscribers who are not in that age range.

{% capture time_now %}{{ 'now' | date: '%s' }}{% endcapture %}{% capture time_dob %}{{ birth_date | date: '%s' }}{% endcapture %}{% assign age = time_now | minus: time_dob | divided_by: 31536000 %} {% if age >= 14 and age <= 28 %} Great, anyone between the ages of 14 and 28 can register! {% else %} You must be between 14-28 to register – sorry! {% endif %}

Here we've tested with a birth date (custom field name - birth_date) of 4/21/1918. Definitely not between 14 and 28!

message template