Configure Database Date Format

[Grant]

The database date format is determined by the Remote Prefs configuration in your database. This determines how Specify exports and handles dates nearly everywhere in both Specify 6 and 7.

Date pickers within the application will be based on your browser’s locale (unless you disable ‘User accessible full date picker’ in the Specify 7 preferences.

Data uploaded using the WorkBench will need to conform to the date format specified in the Remote Preferences file below.

---

1. Go to the User Tools menu and navigate to App Resources

   
   

2. To change the database date format, access the app resources function as an admin user by clicking on the user name at the top of the page. Then under the Global Resources there should be a Remote Preferences resource.

   From here, find the ui.formatting.scrdateformat property.

   

   In this example, it is:

   ui.formatting.scrdateformat=dd/MM/yyyy
   

   It can be set to one of the following values:

   MM dd yy
   MM dd yyyy
   MM-dd-yy
   MM-dd-yyyy
   MM.dd.yy
   MM.dd.yyyy
   MM/dd/yy
   MM/dd/yyyy
   dd MM yy
   dd MM yyyy
   dd MMM yyyy
   dd-MM-yy
   dd-MM-yyyy
   dd-MMM-yyyy
   dd.MM.yy
   dd.MM.yyyy
   dd.MMM.yyyy
   dd/MM/yy
   dd/MM/yyyy
   dd/MMM/yyy
   yyyy MM dd
   yyyy-MM-dd
   yyyy.MM.dd
   yyyy/MM/dd
   

Some additional formatting options regarding dates are mentioned below:

# Year/Month format
ui.formatting.scrmonthformat=MM/YYYY

### NOTE:
# Date format and partial date format may be overridden by browser if fancy date picker is used
# which is why there is an option to disable them:

# Whether to use fancy date picker
ui.formatting.accessible_date_input=true

# Whether to use fancy month picker
ui.formatting.accessible_month_input=true

---

[fedoras]

Is there a way for the fancy date picker to be disabled on user preference level, as to avoid being overridden by the browser settings?

[Grant]

Hi @fedoras,

You can establish a default user preferences file in the App Resources.

We have instructions available on how to do this on GitHub:

Setting default user preferences

You can disable these two options:

• Use accessible full date picker
• Use accessible month picker

This will make it use the Specify default date picker which will be based on the format established in the guide above!