Specifying date format in Django templates with L10N for one language

user_250962 0
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In a Django template I'm displaying a date like:

{{ article.published_at|date }}

which displays like:

Nov. 21, 2018

I would like to change this format, but:

  • I am using Localization, so I don't want to specify a specific date format in the template -- each language will have its own way of displaying dates.

  • The Django DATE_FORMAT setting does not have any effect when the L10N setting is True.

So how would I:

  1. Use a different format for this date when the current language is English (en)
  2. Use the current language's default date format when it's not en
django-templates django
2 Answers

Does your template include the {% load l10n %} tag? You can specify the date format already using the tag above and

for example if you were looking for the date to be displayed like: 1/13/2020

you wourl do: your_date|date:'n/j/Y'

see Link to the docs for builtins |date

Never much point rolling your own when it already exists, would recommend however considering adding a date_format="n/j/Y" in the context. Then you can just right:

{{ item.date_end|date:date_format }}

Then you wont have the format specified in the template, plus you can if it's used everywhere create a context processor to define it so it's included in every render. Thus making it super easy to change site wide.

Create your own context processor

user_108755560

This is the filter I've ended up using as a replacement for the built-in date filter.

# myapp/templatetags/my_filters.py
from django import template
from django.conf import settings
from django.template.defaultfilters import date
from django.utils import dateformat
from django.utils.translation import get_language

register = template.Library()

@register.filter(expects_localtime=True, is_safe=False)
def format_date(value):
    if value in (None, ''):
        return ''

    language_code = get_language()

    if language_code == 'en':
        # Language is English, so use the format defined in settings:
        return dateformat.format(value, settings.DATE_FORMAT)
    else:
        # Language is not English, so use language-specific default:
        return date(value)

I use the normal DATE_FORMAT Django setting in settings.py to set a custom date format:

DATE_FORMAT = 'j F Y'

This is used if the current language is English. Otherwise the current language's default is used.

Use it like:

{% load my_filters %}

{{ article.published_at|format_date }}

You could extend this to provide custom formats for additional languages, but this is all I need for now.

I still expected there to be a way to define per-language date formats in settings, so I still feel like I've missed a simpler way of doing this...

user_2509620
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