Salemaker Dates Issue

[Paul Griffin]

We are having huge problems with dates...if I might take a moment to explain...

Car parts are suitable to cars made between certain dates, eg an Oil Filter for a Peugeot 206 from 1997 to 2007. The way we are set up we can ONLY enter the first date ie the date of manufacture and not the end date. This means that we have to enter the part for every year ei once for 1997, once for 1998, once for 1999 etc...it also means that because the same part might be suitable for multiple vehicles (very common) we have to then enter the same part for EACH vehicle, and then EACH fuel type or BODY type. Currently it means that one single oil filter might need to be entered 120 times! There MUST be a better way and if you know of one I would be eternally grateful! Date formats other than that seem to be fine, they only go wrong in Salemaker.

[Ajeh]

My question is regarding the built in dates to Zen Cart, such as when you Add/Edit a Product ...

Date Available:
(YYYY-MM-DD)

Or Add/Edit a Featured Product ...

Available Date:
Expiry Date:

Do those dates work?

[Paul Griffin]

Hi, yes those dates work fine. The Date available defaults to today's date if it's a brand new product being added, if it's a 'copied' product then the default date is year 2000 for some reason...that's not the end of the world obviously just a small annoyance.

[Ajeh]

Since you are not sure of the origins of this site ...

I would use something like Beyond Compare from scootersoftware.com and check your server files in your /your_secret_admin to a clean copy of Zen Cart v1.3.9h /admin and make sure that there are no files that are out of date ...

Also, in your file:
/your_secret_admin/includes/languages/english.php

does this section of defines match:

// look in your $PATH_LOCALE/locale directory for available locales..
// on RedHat6.0 I used 'en_US'
// on FreeBSD 4.0 I use 'en_US.ISO_8859-1'
// this may not work under win32 environments..
setlocale(LC_TIME, 'en_US.ISO_8859-1');
define('DATE_FORMAT_SHORT', '%m/%d/%Y');  // this is used for strftime()
define('DATE_FORMAT_LONG', '%A %d %B, %Y'); // this is used for strftime()
define('DATE_FORMAT', 'm/d/Y'); // this is used for date()
define('PHP_DATE_TIME_FORMAT', 'm/d/Y H:i:s'); // this is used for date()
define('DATE_TIME_FORMAT', DATE_FORMAT_SHORT . ' %H:%M:%S');
define('DATE_FORMAT_SPIFFYCAL', 'MM/dd/yyyy');  //Use only 'dd', 'MM' and 'yyyy' here in any order

////
// Return date in raw format
// $date should be in format mm/dd/yyyy
// raw date is in format YYYYMMDD, or DDMMYYYY
function zen_date_raw($date, $reverse = false) {
  if ($reverse) {
    return substr($date, 3, 2) . substr($date, 0, 2) . substr($date, 6, 4);
  } else {
    return substr($date, 6, 4) . substr($date, 0, 2) . substr($date, 3, 2);
  }
}

[iaing]

Abit late, but in case it helps anyone else - I was having the same problem and have figured it out. Using the pop-up date picker you choose your start date, then when you pick the finish date, if you're like me you assume Zencart has kept the year but it hasn't, it defaults to the start of it's list: 2002, so when you pick the rest of your date you're picking a finish date in the past, Zencart won't allow this so defaults to 2036 instead. Just remember to set the year for the finish date and it works.

[iaing]

cancel that, thought it had sorted it but not - found the answer elsewhere - UK date format set throughout the site, but Salemaker seems to ignore that, if you manually type the date in US order MM/DD/YYYY and update it works (and afterwards shows the new date in UK order!)