SilverStripe: Please enter a valid date format

From FVue

Problem

After having changed the default locale in SilverStripe to `nl_NL', using this command in _config.php:

i18n::set_default_locale('nl_NL');

submitting Date fields will yield an error:

Please enter a valid date format (d MMM yyyy).

Environment

• SilverStripe-2.4.5

Solution

The solution is to add a set_date_format to mysite/_config.php:

i18n::set_default_locale('nl_NL');
Translatable::set_default_locale('nl_NL');
// Use only numbers to satisfy Zend_Locale_Format::_parseDate()
// Use slashes to satisfy datepicker validation; format 'dd-mm-yyyy' isn't recognized by the Javascript validation...?
i18n::set_date_format('dd/mm/yyyy');

In short, this is because there seems to be a problem with Zend_Locale_Format::_parseDate() matching full month names only... and the Javascript datepicker uses Zend_Locale_Format::_parseDate() to validate dates.

Also, the Javascript validation, doesn't recognize the 'dd-mm-yyyy' format and gives an error "required" unless a slashed format (dd/mm/yyyy) is used.

Rationale

If you put only this in mysite/_config.php:

i18n::set_default_locale('nl_NL');

the call stack will become:

DateField::__construct()
i18n::get_date_format()
Zend_Locale_Format::getDateFormat('nl_NL)
Zend_Locate_Data::getContent('nl_NL', 'date')

Zend_Locate_Data::getContent() defaults to use dateformat "gregorian/medium" and so will retrieve

/ldml/dates/calendars/calendar[@type='gregorian']/dateFormats/dateFormatLength[@type='medium']/dateFormat/pattern

from the file:

sapphire/thirdparty/Zend/Locale/Data/nl.xml

which is set to 'd MMM yyyy'.

"MMM" denotes charaters, i.e. "Oct", "Nov", "Dec".

Zend_Locale_Format::_parseDate(), however, does a non-matching search on full month names ("October", "November", "December") and a subsequent split on numbers (\d+):

preg_match_all('/\d+/u', $number, $splitted);

So e.g. "15 Dec 2012" gets splitted to:

[0] => 15
[1] => 2012

"2012" will be read as the "MMM" month and Zend will die because month > 12.

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