I have page which lists a series of publications...some of the publications link to a PDF file while others link to another HTML page (for example, if the publication has a series of volumes).

In my controller I have the following function to grab the list of publications:

function Publications() {
$publications = new DataObjectSet();
$results = DB::query("SELECT publication.*, file.Filename
FROM publication_practice LEFT OUTER JOIN publication ON publication_practice.PublicationID = publication.ID
LEFT OUTER JOIN file ON publication.PDFLinkID = file.ID
WHERE publication_practice.PracticePageID = '{$this->ParentID}'
ORDER BY Date DESC, Title ASC");
if ($results) {
foreach($results as $result) {
$htmllinkID = $result['HTMLLinkID'];
$publications -> push (new ArrayData (array (
'Title' => $result['Title'],
'Date' => $result['Date'],
'Filename' => $result['Filename'],
'Abstract' => $result['Abstract'],
'HTMLLink' => DataObject::get('PublicationPage', "sitetree_live.ID = '$htmllinkID'")
)));
}
return $publications;
}
return false;
}

In my template, ($Date) will output (2010-02-01) however, ($Date.Format(F Y)) outputs just () rather then (February 2010). My sense is that the date is being converted to a string when it is pushed to the array. So...is there a way to (1) push it to the array as a date, (2) format it as I'm pushing it into the array (the several things I've tried haven't worked), or (3) another way to get it formatted in the template? Thanks.

Cheers,
Laurie

When you are dealing with results like that you have simple strings, in order to use the values as objects you need to create the objects and pass them in like...

'Date' => new Date($result['Date']);

Or I think you can do 'Date' => DBField::create('Date', $result['Date']); Can't remember the differences.

Thanks Willr!

I tried both suggestions...the winner seems to be DBField::create.

So in my code I switched

$publications -> push (new ArrayData (array (
'Title' => $result['Title'],
'Date' => $result['Date'],
'Filename' => $result['Filename'],
'Abstract' => $result['Abstract'],
'HTMLLink' => DataObject::get('PublicationPage', "sitetree_live.ID = '$htmllinkID'")
)));

to

$publications -> push (new ArrayData (array (
'Title' => $result['Title'],
'Date' => DBField::create('Date', $result['Date']),
'Filename' => $result['Filename'],
'Abstract' => $result['Abstract'],
'HTMLLink' => DataObject::get('PublicationPage', "sitetree_live.ID = '$htmllinkID'")
)));

And now ($Date.Format(F Y)) is working perfectly in my template.