Extract Year
The Extract Year data converter extracts a year from a date in the input text. The date may be incomplete, such as containing only the year.
Properties
The Extract Year data converter is configured using the following properties:
- Locale
-
Specifies the locale that is used in the date.
- Date Format Pattern
-
Contains a pattern that specifies the format of the date from which the year should be extracted. See the syntax description below.
- Max. Months Ahead
-
The maximum number of months to look ahead. This field takes effect only in the absence of an explicit year when using the 'dd' and 'MM' patterns.
- Max. Days Ahead
-
The maximum number of days to look ahead. This field takes effect only in the absence of an explicit month when using the 'dd' and 'yyy' patterns.
- Description
-
Type in a description to be shown in the list of data converters. If there is no type in a description, one will be generated.
Syntax of the Date Format Pattern
The following patterns can be combined to create the pattern in the Date Format Pattern property:
|
Pattern |
Description |
|---|---|
|
yy |
Exactly two digit year |
|
yyy |
Any year |
|
yyyy |
Exactly four digit year |
|
YYYY1 |
Exactly four digit week year |
|
MM |
One or two digit month, abbreviations or full names of months |
|
dd |
One or two digit date |
|
EEE |
Short weekday name (e.g. Mon instead of Monday). |
|
EEEE |
Full weekday name (e.g. Monday). |
|
hh or HH |
One or two digit hour |
|
mm |
One or two digit minute |
|
ss |
One or two digit second |
|
a |
AM or PM marker |
|
Z |
Time Zone identifier (e.g. "PST", "Central European Time" or "GMT+02:00"). |
|
* |
Skip any number of characters (this must be used in order to skip alphanumeric characters a-z and A-Z) |
|
Space |
Skip one or more white spaces |
|
Any other non-alphanumeric character |
Skip that exact character (use * to skip alphanumeric characters) |
If the weekday patterns ('EEE' and 'EEEE') are used and the date pattern ('dd') is not used, then the month and year patterns ('MM' and 'yy'/'yyy'/'yyyy') cannot be used. In this case, the date found is the next day with a name matching the pattern. For example, if the pattern is 'EEEE' and the input is the following text:
Wednesday
the year found is the year of the next Wednesday.
If the weekday patterns are used together with the date pattern (and possibly the month and year patterns), the weekday is discarded. For example, if the pattern is 'EEE, dd/MM/yyy' and the input is the following text:
the year found is '2003'.
The 'EEE' pattern matches the short names of the weekdays (e.g. Mon, Tue etc.). If the pattern should match the entire weekday name, use the 'EEEE' pattern. For example, if the input is the following text:
Thus, let us meet on Wednesday
The pattern 'EEEE' should be used because the pattern 'EEE' would match 'Thu' causing the Extract Year data converter to find the year of the next Thursday.