Re: Date validation of different formats in RPG

["John King" <jking@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

1) James, Joel - thanks for the links. There is some great stuff on your
sites. One of my as-time-allows projects is to write a procedure to assist
our operators when scheduling jobs: given a 'projected complete' date and a
'days prior' value it will return the necessary start date (respecting
weekends and holidays). I'll be glad to donate the code when it is complete.

2) Scott - thanks for the ideas. Since most data arrives as .xls and can be
in varying formats, we've been using StrPcCmd to pass the data through Excel
and save it to the IFS with the help of some VB code. Excel allows the
operators to view, re-arrange columns and format cells prior to using
CpyFrmStmf to populate a work-file in qsys.lib which is fed to a batch
validation/posting routine. All this occurs within one CL and actually works
pretty smoothly and quickly, but I was hoping to remove some of the manual
intervention. I was wondering how other folks have handled similar
situations. Given the variability of the input, it may not be possible to
simplify the import process any further.

 Excel is made for just that sort of data manipulation and it makes no sense
to try to duplicate it with an RPG subfile. I may enhance the date checking
with CEEDAYS, though. One of these days I'll finish implementing those
RPG/POI routines and just read the .xls directly into RPG...

JK

<snip>

date: Thu, 01 Apr 2004 10:23:52 +0000
from: Joel Cochran <jrc@xxxxxxxxxx>
subject: Re: Date validation of different formats in RPG

For V5R1+ my free xRPG Library has this procedure available... check out
the docs here for createDate()...

http://www.rpgnext.com/docs/rnbdates/xRPG_procedures_createDate.php

This also addresses the '010203' problem Scott was referring to.

Joel Cochran
http://www.rpgnext.com


On Thu, 2004-04-01 at 00:12, John King wrote:
> All,
> 
>  Does anyone have any experience or 'best practices' for validating dates
of
> differing formats in RPG?
> 
>  Scenario: we receive data from various sources, each one of which seems
to
> have a different idea of how dates should be formatted. Here in the US
most
> data entry operators use *MDY format, but others feel free to use *MDY0,
> *USA, etc, etc. Demanding consistency won't work - these are our customers
> and part of the 'value' our company offers is to allow them to send data
in
> the format they feel comfortable with.
> 
>  At the time they need to validated, the dates have already been parsed
into
> 10A fields in a subfile program, I'm considering writing a procedure to
make
> a 'best-guess' as to the date's format - something akin to the code below.
> Someone has to have addressed this situation before - would you care to
give
> out a few pointers?
> 
> Thanks,
> JK
> 
> C                   If        s_DatP <> *blank                      
> C     *MDY          Test(de)                s_DatP                  
> C                   If        not %error                            
> C     *MDY          Move      s_DatP        w_Date                  
> C                   Else                                            
> C     *MDY0         Test(de)                s_DatP                  
> C                   If        not %error                            
> C     *MDY0         Move      s_DatP        w_Date                  
> C                   Else                                            
> C     *USA          Test(de)                s_DatP                  
> C                   If        not %error                            
> C     *USA          Move      s_DatP        w_Date                  
> C                   Else                                            
> C     *USA0         Test(de)                s_DatP                  
> C                   If        not %error                            
> C     *USA0         Move      s_DatP        w_Date                  
> C                   Else                                            
> C                   Eval      SflValErrF = 'Y'                   
> C                   CallP     SndMsgToThisPgmQ( 'USR0406' )         
> C                   Seton                                        75 
> C                   EndIf
> C                   EndIf   
> C                   EndIf   
> C                   EndIf   
> C                   EndIf                                              
>