Escape characters in format

Question

I'm trying to find a method of escaping characters in Craft's DateTime object.

This is the output I'm trying to achieve: 16th January 2016

This is what I've tried: {{ article.postDate.format('j\<\s\u\p\>S\<\/\s\u\p\> F Y') }}

This is the output: 16&lt;00000000p&gt;th<!--00000000p--> January 2016

I can achieve the output by appending output together but there has to be a better way of achieving this than the following:

{{ article.postDate.format('j') }}<sup>{{ article.postDate.format('S') }}</sup> {{ article.postDate.format(' F Y') }}

Any pointers to documentation would be appreciated.

Answer 1

After trial and error I figured out you can escape characters using double backslash.

{{ article.postDate.format('j\\<\\s\\u\\p\\>S\\<\\/\\s\\u\\p\\> F Y') | raw }}

Outputs: 14<sup>th</sup> January 2016

In search of documentation I found a mention of double-escaping regular expressions due to Twig auto-escaping \. At this point I'm guessing this works for most Craft-Twig functions.

Answer 2

Try the Twig date filter instead:

{{ article.postDate|date('jS F Y') }}

to wrap the ordinal in <sup>:

{{ article.postDate|date('j') }}<sup>{{ article.postDate|date('S') }}</sup>
{{ article.postDate|date('F Y') }}

if you think it's to ugly for use in your templates, consider "hiding" it in a macro.

Answer 3

If you're using Craft 3, the Typogrify plugin will do the <sup> on ordinal numbers automatically for you.