How do the format options work on input fields?

Each field in Servoy has a "format" property that can be set.

Each field in Servoy has a "format" property that can be set. In the drop-down list are common formats used for display. However, you can also do a lot more that what is listed in the drop-down. The formats for dates are based on the SimpleDateFormat and DecimalFormat java class. Below is a list of possible format options.

Date Formats:

Letter Date or Time Component Presentation Examples
G Era designator Text AD
y Year Year 1996; 96
M Month in year Month July; Jul; 07
w Week in year Number 27
W Week in month Number 2
D Day in year Number 189
d Day in month Number 10
F Day of week in month Number 2
E Day in week Text Tuesday; Tue
a Am/pm marker Text PM
H Hour in day (0-23) Number 0
k Hour in day (1-24) Number 24
K Hour in am/pm (0-11) Number 0
h Hour in am/pm (1-12) Number 12
m Minute in hour Number 30
s Second in minute Number 55
S Millisecond Number 978
z Time zone General time zone Pacific Standard Time; PST; GMT-08:00
Z Time zone RFC 822 time zone -0800
Number Formats:
Symbol Location Localized? Meaning
0 Number Yes Digit
# Number Yes Digit, zero shows as absent
. Number Yes Decimal separator or monetary decimal separator
- Number Yes Minus sign
, Number Yes Grouping separator
E Number Yes Separates mantissa and exponent in scientific notation. Need not be quoted in prefix or suffix.
; Subpattern boundary Yes Separates positive and negative subpatterns
% Prefix or suffix Yes Multiply by 100 and show as percentage
\u2030 Prefix or suffix Yes Multiply by 1000 and show as per mille
¤ (\u00A4) Prefix or suffix No Currency sign, replaced by currency symbol. If doubled, replaced by international currency symbol. If present in a pattern, the monetary decimal separator is used instead of the decimal separator.
' Prefix or suffix No Used to quote special characters in a prefix or suffix, for example, "'#'#" formats 123 to "#123". To create a single quote itself, use two in a row: "# o''clock".

In addition you can also specify a different input and display format by using a pipe in the format of display|input. For example, $#,###.00|#.## will display with the dollar sign and force 2 decimal places, while allowing the user to enter in without the currency symbol, or decimals.

Finally, there are also server-wide defaults that can be set on the home page in the web server-admin, so you don't have to specify the format for every field. Instead, you can just enter your defaults on the server-admin page, and then override the defaults on a field by field basis.