Evaluating dates in a DVWP

Question

I'm trying to evaluate 2 dates in my DVWP, @StartDate (date and time field) and ddwrt:Today(). My expression looks like this:

<xsl:when>
   <xsl:choose>
     <xsl:when test="ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@StartDate) ,1033 ,'M/d/yyyy HH:mm:ss') &lt;= ddwrt:Today()">Closed</xsl:when>
        <xsl:otherwise>
          <xsl:choose>
              <xsl:when test="@TotalSeats = 0">Unlimited Seating</xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test="@TotalSeats - @FilledSeats = 0 and @TotalSeats != 0">Currently Full</xsl:when>
            <xsl:when test="@TotalSeats - @FilledSeats &gt; 0 and @TotalSeats != 0"><xsl:value-of select="@TotalSeats - @FilledSeats" /> Seats Available</xsl:when>
           </xsl:choose>
         </xsl:otherwise>
    </xsl:choose>
</xsl:when>

My issue is the initial when test vever evaluates correctly even though the dates and times are in the correct format from what I can tell. What am I missing here?

Answer 1

What I normally tend to do is convert the dates to YYYYMMDD format for both the @StartDate and the Today(), that way they're 8 digit numbers which I then compare.

Answer 2

YYYMMDDHHmm should work, per James' suggestion in the comments above. Remember that XSL operates on text values, not binary values.

<xsl:value-of select="ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(@Modified) ,1033 ,'yyyyMMdd HHmmss')"/>
<xsl:value-of select="ddwrt:FormatDateTime(string(ddwrt:TodayIso()) ,1033 ,'yyyyMMdd HHmmss')"/>

Those are the two values you need. Unfortunately, ddwrt:TodayISO() doesn't include the timezone offset, so you still need to monkey around to include that.

Alternatively, you can just do the date comparison in one xsl:when and compare the times only if you need to because the dates match.