Data Type - Text Date

Datatype: textDateType

Found in http://www.posc.org/schemas/useful_types.xsd
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Description:

A datatype of textDateType is considered to be an undesirable choice for dates. However, it is included for those who wish to use non-standard date formats. The other two date types are parsedDateType, which declares a date with separate year, month, day tags, and isoDateType, which uses the ISO 8601 standard format.

The textDateType is a free format string with a mandatory type attribute. It is strictly up to the application program to interpret the type attribute and to be able to parse the text string if necessary.

type: Mandatory attribute. No control is set on the meaning of the values of this attribute. It is up to the using application schema to define the meaning of any type values, either through restriction of this datatype or through a text specification.

Proposed Usage:

This datatype was developed to support the use of non-standard date formats, such as the American format of mm/dd/yy or the European format of dd/mm/yy.

XML Schema:

The schema and examples do not explicitly show the lines that set the namespaces.

All schema examples will use xsd: as the namespace for the schema tags and datatypes, and null for all the locally generated namespaces.

XML Examples will exclude namespace modifiers for clarity. Actual XML will probably need namespaces.

<xsd:complexType name="textDateType">
 <xsd:simpleContent>
  <xsd:extension base="xsd:string">
   <xsd:attribute name="type" type="xsd:string" use="required"/>
  </xsd:extension>
 </xsd:simpleContent>
</xsd:complexType>

Sample Usage Schema:

This may be used as a choice with other date datatypes to allow other formats. Compare, in particular, with parsedDateType and isoDateType.

It may be desirable to add an additional layer to identify the date as a text formatted date so that a reader application will know. Both methods are shown below.

   <xsd:element name="SpudDate" type="textDateType"/>

   <xsd:element name="CompletionDate>
    <xsd:complexType>
     <xsd:sequence>
      <xsd:element name="USDate" type="textDateType"/>
     </xsd:sequence>
    </xsd:complexType>
   </xsd:element>

Sample XML:

   <SpudDate type="USFormat">4/22/99</SpudDate>

   <CompletionDate>
    <USDate type="dd/mm/yy">6/3/99</USDate>
   </CompletionDate>