NAME

Date::MSAccess - Manage dates in MS Access format

Synopsis

use Date::MSAccess;

my($obj)  = Date::MSAccess -> new();
my($date) = $obj -> decode_date(37988); # Returns '20040101'.
my($now)  = $obj -> todays_date();      # Returns 38006 on 20-Jan-2004.

Description

Date::MSAccess is a pure Perl module.

It can convert a number which is an MS Access date into a string of the form 'YYYYMMDD'.

Also, it can return today's date in MS Access format.

Note: MS Access dates are based on 12 noon.

Note: MS Access dates can be fractional, eg 3008.25, but this module currently ignores such fractions.

Distributions

This module is available both as a Unix-style distro (*.tgz) and an ActiveState-style distro (*.ppd). The latter is shipped in a *.zip file.

See http://savage.net.au/Perl-modules.html for details.

See http://savage.net.au/Perl-modules/html/installing-a-module.html for help on unpacking and installing each type of distro.

Constructor and initialization

new(...) returns a Date::MSAccess object.

This is the class's contructor.

Usage: Date::MSAccess -> new().

This option does not take any values.

Method: decode_date(<A number corresponding to an MS Access date>)

Either returns a string of the form 'YYYYMMDD', or the string '00000000'.

The latter was chosen to be compatible with MySQL and Postgres 'timestamp' fields.

eg: decode_date(37988) returns '20040101'.

Method: todays_date()

Returns a number corresponding to today's date in MS Access format.

Eg: On 20-Jan-2004 the number returned was 38006.

Reference

http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/default.asp?url=/archive/en-us/dnaraccgen/html/msdn_datetime.asp

Author

Date::MSAccess was written by Ron Savage <ron@savage.net.au> in 2004.

Home page: http://savage.net.au/index.html

Copyright

Australian copyright (c) 2004, Ron Savage. All Programs of mine are 'OSI Certified Open Source Software'; you can redistribute them and/or modify them under the terms of The Artistic License, a copy of which is available at: http://www.opensource.org/licenses/index.html