Anthony wrote in with the following problem:

Im designing a simple page that allows the user to pick a date and save it in the DB. My DB is SQL express 2005 and below is the code im using for the field:
<cfinput type="DateField" name="SUBMISSION_DATE" message="- You must enter a valid date." validateat="onSubmit" class="field_small" id="SUBMISSION_DATE" value="#DateFormat(DETAIL1.SUBMISSION_DATE,'dd/mm/yyyy')#" enabled="Yes">

I'm just using a cfupdate to store the details back to the db.

My problem is it keeps changing the date back to us format. ie mm/dd/yyyy.

I have looked at the CF date picker and it seems to be displaying the date in us format after being picked so is there some other setting that i need to include to have it store the date as UK.

i have set the locale to English(UK) and tested it so it showing the correct locale.

Im just at a loss as to where i can change the format back to UK or see whats happening.

Ok, so before going any further, the first thing I recommended was getting rid of cfupdate. It's nice for folks who may know nothing about SQL but in general you want to use a cfquery when performing updates. However, that wasn't his issue. I was able to replicate what he saw rather quickly with this code.

<cfset setLocale("English (UK)" )> <cfset theDate = createDate(2010,10,2)> <cfoutput>#dateFormat(theDate)#</cfoutput>

<cfform name="form"> <cfinput name="theDate" type="datefield" > </cfform>

Ok, if we look at this, we can see the date is being rendered correctly in that weird European day first format:

But if you pass the date into the field:

<cfinput name="theDate" type="datefield" value="#theDate#">

You end up something that isn't quite right: 10/02/2010. It displays in American format, but the date is right. Clicking on the calendar will bring you to the right day. Ok, so how to fix? I raised the question on a private listserv and specifically called out to Paul Hastings. In our entire community I don't think anyone else knows as much about localization and internationalization than Paul. Not surprisingly he came up with the answer. It was kind of obvious once I saw it, but it never would have occurred to me. Just make use of the mask attribute!

<cfset setLocale("English (UK)" )> <cfset theDate = createDate(2010,10,2)> <cfoutput>#dateFormat(theDate)#</cfoutput>

<cfform name="form"> <cfinput name="theDate" type="datefield" value="#theDate#" mask="dd/mm/yyyy"> </cfform>

Now when you run this you get a properly formatted result both immediately on display and when changing the value:

Paul actually went a step further and demonstrated how you can even make the mask dynamic. This would be useful on a site that supports multiple locales, not just the UK one:

<cfscript> thisLocale=createObject("java","java.util.Locale").init("en","GB"); format=3; //0==FULL --> 3==SHORT dF=createObject("java","java.text.DateFormat").getDateInstance(format,thisLocale); pattern=dF.toLocalizedPattern(); </cfscript>

Anyway, I hope this helps. This is the first time I've ever seen any of ColdFusion's Ajax controls in a non-American locale so this was all new to me. (I'll also use this opportunity to point out that jQuery UI's date picker supports localization as well.)