October 5, 2010 in Blog by Amer

Convert All Hirji Formats into Gregorian

I came across a requirement where I needed to convert users entry from Hirjri Calendar date (the Islamic Calendar) into the Gregorian Calendar. In previous posts, I have shown how to convert Gregorian Date (date data type in Dynamics AX) into Hirjri… if you are interested in those check them out here:

• Yet another great way to handle the Hijri date in Dynamics AX!
• Hijri date in Dynamics AX

In order to convert a Hirji date into Gregorian, I used the .NET classes referenced in the any Dynamics AX standard version.

Enjoy!

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//Amer Atiyah, http://blog.amerax.net
static date hijri2GrDate(DAPHijridateStr   hijriDateStr)
{
    System.Globalization.CultureInfo arCul = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("ar-SA");
    System.Globalization.CultureInfo enCul = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("en-US");
    System.DateTime                  tempDateTime;
    str                              strTemp;
    System.String[]                  arr;
    date                             grDate;
;
 
    //all expected dates formats
    arr = new System.String[18]();
    arr.SetValue("dd M yyyy",  0);
    arr.SetValue("yyyy/MM/dd",  1);
    arr.SetValue("yyyy/M/d",    2);
    arr.SetValue("d/M/yyyy",    3);
    arr.SetValue("dd/MM/yyyy",  4);
    arr.SetValue("yyyy-MM-dd",  5);
    arr.SetValue("d/MM/yyyy",   6);
    arr.SetValue("dd/M/yyyy",   7);
    arr.SetValue("yyyy-M-d",    8);
    arr.SetValue("dd-MM-yyyy",  9);
    arr.SetValue("yyyy MM dd",  10);
    arr.SetValue("d-M-yyyy",    11);
    arr.SetValue("d-MM-yyyy",   12);
    arr.SetValue("dd-M-yyyy",   13);
    arr.SetValue("d M yyyy",    14);
    arr.SetValue("dd MM yyyy",  15);
    arr.SetValue("yyyy M d",    16);
    arr.SetValue("d MM yyyy",   17);
 
    try
    {
        tempDateTime = System.DateTime::ParseExact(hijriDateStr, arr, arCul, System.Globalization.DateTimeStyles::AllowWhiteSpaces);
    }
    catch
    {
        error("Unexpected Hirji date format.");
        return datenull();
    }
    strTemp = tempDateTime.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy");
    grDate = str2date(strTemp, 123);
 
    return grDate;
}

It might a great idea if you added this method to the “Global” class, like what I did :).

May 15, 2010 in Blog by Amer

Yet another great way to handle the Hijri date in Dynamics AX!

In a previous post, I descriped in deatils how to gte (and set) Hijri date in Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009. In that post I have shown how to get Hirji date in Dynamics AX by calling a SQL function from X++.

A calleague of mine has also came up with another great idea to handle the Hirji date using the CLR Interoperability. The standard Dynamics AX 2009 comes with a set of very important .NET libraries referenced to be used automatically in Dynamics AX 2009.

 What you could use out of those libraries: System.Globalization library of .NET framework. But of course, you have to use a string to show the value of that date since you cannot get a Hirji date (with its values like 1430 as a year) and assign it to an X++ date datatype.

Check out this code to have the Hirji date converted from X++ gregorian date:

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 display STRExtendedDT ExpieryDate_H()
{
    System.Globalization.Calendar           Calendar = new System.Globalization.HijriCalendar();
    System.Globalization.DateTimeFormatInfo hirjiDate;
    System.Globalization.CultureInfo        cultureInfo = new System.Globalization.CultureInfo("ar-SA",false);
    System.DateTime                         dt;
    STRExtendedDT                           dateString;
    ;
 
    dt = this.ExpieryDate;
    hirjiDate = cultureinfo.get_DateTimeFormat();
    hirjiDate.set_Calendar(Calendar);
    dateString = dt.ToString("dd/MM/yyyy", hirjiDate);
 
    return dateString;
}

You will get :

December 22, 2009 in Blog by Amer

Hijri date in Dynamics AX

In Microsoft Dynamics AX 2009, Hirji calendar (the Islamic calendar) is not yet supported although Hirji date is there in the background of Dynamics AX 2009!

To enable the Hirji Calendar, you should modify some X++ code in the User Options form. To do so, go to: SysUserSetup –> Methods –> run and change the following blue code into the red:

Enabeling Hijri Calendar in User Options form in X++

  By doing this, you will have a drop down list in the User Options shown in the General tab like the following:

Hijri date in User Options form

With this options, you could clearly understand that Microsoft is putting something to enable the Hijri calendar. I have done some testing over this options. It looks that they’re using a middleware to convert the “actual” Gregorian date that is in the database so the user see the data in Hijri format. Unfortunately, I couldn’t complete the testing with successful results… it started to get me weird results. That’s why Microsoft is not yet supporting it.

Till Microsoft supports it, you could use a very easy to use function in the SQL server: convert(datetime,’12-22-2009′,102), 131)  

To solve the Hirji date problem, you could create a class with two methods:  

1. One that takes a “date”  and returns a Hirji date after calling this SQL method: select convert(varchar,convert(datetime,’12-22-2009′,102), 131)  –try to run this in SQL Server to see the result. 
2. Other that takes a Hijri date in an str format, and returns a date by executing this SQL code:  select convert(datetime,’22-01-1417′, 131) –try to run this in SQL Server to see the result

 By this, you could have the ability to show the user a StringEdit control that uses edit moeth to write a Hirji date and you save the result of conversion in the normal Gregorian date, like this:

Edit method to show Hirji date from Gregorian date

This is the result:

Hiji StringEdit control and DateEdit control