Formatting Special Data

If you want to display numbers from a database on your web page, chances are you will have to do some formatting to get your data to display the way you want it to.  Here are a few examples.

Dates:

<% Response.Write FormatDateTime(Date, vbShortDate) %>

<% Response.Write FormatDateTime(Date, vbLongDate) %>

There are a lot of ways to display dates.  The first line returns the short date in a format like this: “6/27/2015”.  The second line returns the long date in a format like this:  “Wednesday, June 17, 2015”.

 

Times:

<% Response.Write FormatDateTime(Time, vbShortTime) %>

<% Response.Write FormatDateTime(Time, vbLongTime) %>

There are a lot of ways to display times.  The first line returns the short time in a “10:25” format, while the second line returns the long date in a “10:06:05 AM” format.  If you want the display to update and continue counting seconds live on the users browser, you need to use JavaScript to do this.

 

Currency:

<% Response.Write FormatCurrency ( Variable, -1, -2, -2, -2) %>

When displaying currency, these are the system default settings.

  • The first setting Variable contains the currency amount.
  • The second setting is the number of decimal places.
  • The third setting specifies not to use leading zeros for numbers less than one.
  • The fourth setting specifies not to use parenthesis around negative numbers.
  • The fifth setting specifies not to use a comma to separate number larger than one thousand.

The third, fourth, and fifth settings are in the “off” position by default.  To turn these settings “on”, replace their respective -2 setting with a -1.  To specify the number of decimals to use, simply change the second setting from -1 to whatever number you want.

 

Numbers:

<% Cint (Variable) %>

When displaying numbers, Cint displays the Integer subtype, which takes up 2 bytes in memory and can contain a value between -32,768 and 32,767.

<% Clng (Variable) %>

When displaying numbers, Clng displays the Long subtype which takes up 4 bytes in memory and can contain a value between -2,147,483,648 and 2,147,483,647.

<% Cdbl (Variable) %>

When displaying numbers, Cdbl displays the Double subtype, which takes up 8 bytes in memory, 4 bytes of which are used for containing fractional values.  It is a very precise subtype used for advanced mathematical expressions including fractional or decimal values.

 

These are just a few of the most common techniques for formatting special data.  Happy Formatting!

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