Assign the Date format to a field via JavaScript

Hi, 

Check here in this guide:

http://www.acrotex.net/blog/wp-content/uploads/2011/07/pdfblog_22.pdf 

Pages 9 through 13 --->>>>    15.2. Format Category: Number

this pdf guide has examples with source code and fields that you can practice on

You have to look at the source code of each function/property to find out what it does.

I looked it up in my own code (from this paid-for tool I've created: http://try67.blogspot.com/2012/06/acrobat-apply-format-to-multiple-fields.html) and the methods you need to use are called AFSpecial_Format and AFSpecial_Keystroke.

All of the custom formatting functions are defined in folder level scripts that ship with Acrobat. In later versions these script are encoded into an intermediate binary format, but if you have an older version of acrobat sitting around, just look in the app JavaScript folder. There's lots of interesting undocumented code. 

You can also find these functions by running this script in the console.

for(nm in this){if(/^AF/.test(nm))console.println(nm);}

Very helpful post. Here are some more informations in case someone else has the requirements as mine.

Using AFDate_FormatEx and AFDate_KeystrokeEx worked perfectly in cases where a specific format is required. However, I had the case where many formats were to be accepted and the error message provided by the "Keystroke" event had to be in the language of the file used (and not the program language). I wanted to roll my own functions to setAction but was running into the problem where the calendar drop down would not be shown on the field or would not always work. Turns out that the code to be supplied to setAction with "Format" has to be a function starting with "AFDate_FormatEx". So this code does not show the drop down:

f.setAction("Format", "some_function(\""+cFormat+"\")");

whereas this one does:

f.setAction("Format", "AFDate_FormatEx_some_function(\""+cFormat+"\")");

Double quotes should be used around the argument as the use of the single quotes like the call below seemed to be a problem:

f.setAction("Format", "AFDate_FormatEx_some_function('"+cFormat+"')");

The calendar drop down is shown the first time but it will not work drop anymore after one use. Same if the function call does not have a string parameter:

f.setAction("Format", "AFDate_FormatEx_some_function()");

The "Keystroke" event can have any name and no or any number of parameters.