Do you want to display or use a Gravity Forms Date Field value as another relative date, for example tomorrow or week later, the first day of next month or a certain amount of days ago? With the GravityWP – Advanced Merge Tags Add-on for Gravity Forms you get a Merge Tag to easily do that.
Merge Tag gwp_date_field
You can use the gwp_date_field Merge Tag to accomplish modifying the Merge Tag value (output) of a Date Field (and even a Text Field which contains a correct formatted date). See for example the code below, where the Merge Tag takes the filled in value in the form and modifies the output to the first day of next month and shows the result in the format m/d/Y:
{gwp_date_field id=5 modify="first day of next month" format="m/d/Y"}
Configuring relative date formats
Check out the documentation on Relative Formats on php.net. We’ll give you a brief ‘How To’ here.
To configure the relative date, you have to fill something after ‘modify=’ in the Merge Tag. You can make your own combination using the tools below:
| dayname | sunday | monday | tuesday | wednesday | thursday | friday | saturday | sun | mon | tue | wed | thu | fri | sat |
| ordinal | first | second | third | fourth | fifth | sixth | seventh | eighth | ninth | tenth | eleventh | twelfth | next | last | previous | this |
| unit | sec | second | min | minute | hour | day | fortnight | forthnight | month | year | weeks | daytext |
Make combinations
| modify=”+1 month” | Date + 1 month |
| modify=”last day of +1 month'” | Date + 1 month > last day of that month |
| modify=”+2 weeks” | Date + 2 weeks |
| modify=”-2 weeks” | Date minus (-) 2 weeks (two weeks ago) |
| modify=”2 weeks ago” | Date minus (-) 2 weeks (two weeks ago) |
| modify=”+3 weekdays” | Date + 3 weekdays (skips the weekend) |
Skip the weekend using weekdays
You can also use ‘weekday’ or ‘weekdays’ in the Merge Tag. In that case it will skip Saturday and Sunday (skip the weekend). For example if you use a date that is on Friday and you use in the Merge Tag ‘+1 weekday’, it will give you the date of Monday. If you use the same relative date on Monday, it will return Tuesday.
{gwp_date_field id=1 modify="+1 weekday" format="m/d/Y"}{gwp_date_field id=1 modify="+3 weekdays" format="m/d/Y"}Change the output date format
You can use the gwp_date_field Merge Tag in combination with other settings, like output format. We’ve included that in the examples before.
{gwp_date_field id=1 modify="+3 weekdays" format="Y-m-d H:i:s"}Change the timezone
You can also directly change the timezone of the output. Use it in combination with the timezone setting:
{gwp_date_field id=1 modify="+3 weekdays" format="Y-m-d H:i:s" timezone="Europe/Amsterdam"}Read more about changing timezones in our tutorial: Modifying Timezone Gravity Forms Date Field.
Date Created
You can also use the modify settings on the date the Gravity Forms entry was created. Use for that the gwp_date_created Merge Tag (no need to add an id, because this is meta data in the Entry):
{gwp_date_created modify="+3 weekdays" format="d-m-Y"}Date Updated
You can also use the modify settings on the date the Gravity Forms entry was last updated. Use for that the gwp_date_updated Merge Tag (no need to add an id, because this is meta data in the Entry):
{gwp_date_updated modify="+3 weekdays" format="d-m-Y"}FAQ relative dates
No, the Merge Tag only displays the changed date (the relative date) on the place you use the Merge Tag. You can use the Merge Tag inside a Gravity Flow Update Fields or Edit Entry step to capture the output.
Yes, you can use the gwp_date_created Merge Tag to modify the output of the date an Entry was created.
Yes, for that you can use the gwp_date_updated Merge Tag.
The Field ID points to the field which contains the filled in (or selected) Date you want to modify.
Yes, for all possibilities of modifying the date, you can check out the documentation on Relative Formats on php.net.
