It’s a common task to convert dates found in external sources to the PDI/Apache Hop date format. While PDI/Apache Hop offers some typcial conversion masks as a drop down, you may need to create an own one. Here a cheat sheet how to use the masking parameters:
| Symbol | Meaning | Type | Example |
| G | Era | Text | “GG” -> “AD” |
| y | Year | Number | “yy” -> “03””yyyy” -> “2003” |
| M | Month | Text or Number | “M” -> “7””M” -> “12””MM” -> “07””MMM” -> “Jul””MMMM” -> “December” |
| d | Day in month | Number | “d” -> “3””dd” -> “03” |
| h | Hour(1-12, AM/PM) | Number | “h” -> “3””hh” -> “03” |
| H | Hour (0-23) | Number | “H” -> “15””HH” -> “15” |
| k | Hour (1-24) | Number | “k” -> “3””kk” -> “03” |
| K | Hour (0-11, AM/PM) | Number | “K” -> “15””KK” -> “15” |
| m | Minute | Number | “m” -> “7””m” -> “15””mm” -> “15” |
| s | Second | Number | “s” -> “15””ss” -> “15” |
| S | Millisecond (0-999) | Number | “SSS” -> “007” |
| E | Day in week | Text | “EEE” -> “Tue””EEEE” -> “Tuesday” |
| D | Day in year (1-365 or 1-364) | Number | “D” -> “65””DDD” -> “065” |
| F | Day of week in month (1-5) | Number | “F” -> “1” |
| w | Week in year (1-53) | Number | “w” -> “7” |
| W | Week in month (1-5) | Number | “W” -> “3” |
| a | AM/PM | Text | “a” -> “AM””aa” -> “AM” |
| z | Time zone | Text | “z” -> “EST””zzz” -> EST””zzzz” -> Eastern Standard Time” |
| X | Time zone offset | Text | “XXX” -> “-08:00” |
| ‘ | Escape for text | Delimiter | “hour’h” -> “hour 9” |
| ” | Single quote | Literal | “ss”SSS” -> “45’876”. Use two quote marks in a row to create a single quote in a string. |
Pentaho & Apache Hop Hints 