A better way to format dates?

[christophsax]

We are looking for a language dependent date formatting that does not depend on the system. Current cd_format_date.R works differently on every system. Can we find a solution that does not depend on the system?

@krlmlr
@valeguggia

[christophsax]

Here is an attempt:
https://github.com/cynkra/admindown/blob/master/R/cd_format_date.R

[christophsax]

This is what we did in admindown:

#' Language Specific Date Formatting
#'
#' Changes the format of the date
#' @param date Date Creation date read from the metadata, default is the system date
#' @param lang Character. Language read from the metadata
#'
#' @export
#' @examples
#' cd_format_date(Sys.Date())
cd_format_date <- function(date = default(rmarkdown::metadata$date, Sys.Date()),
                           lang = default(rmarkdown::metadata$lang, "de-DE")) {
  lang <- clean_lang(lang)
  date <- as.Date(date)

  month_names <-
    list(
      en = c("January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"),
      de = c("Januar", "Februar", "März", "April", "Mai", "Juni", "Juli", "August", "September", "Oktober", "November", "Dezember"),
      it = c("gennaio", "febbraio", "marzo", "aprile", "maggio", "giugno", "luglio", "agosto", "settembre", "ottobre", "novembre", "dicembre"),
      fr = c("janvier", "février", "mars", "avril", "mai", "juin", "juillet", "août", "septembre", "octobre", "novembre", "décembre")
    )

  skeleton <-
    c(
      en = "{month_name} {day}, {year}",
      de = "{day}. {month_name} {year}",
      it = "{day} {month_name} {year}",
      fr = "{day} {month_name} {year}"
    )

  day <- as.POSIXlt(date)$mday
  month_name <- month_names[[lang]][as.POSIXlt(date)$mon + 1L]
  year <- as.POSIXlt(date)$year + 1900L

  glue::glue(skeleton[lang])
}