Tag: web development

Discussing topics in creating web sites and pages. Tools, scripting, software, etc.

Keeping date format in OpenOffice spreadsheet when saving to CSV

Found this one on the OO mailing list archive. I wanted to dupe it here in case that page ever disappears. The original post is located here: http://www.openoffice.org/servlets/ReadMsg?list=users&msgNo=119402

The parent poster and I share the same issue. Formatting a CSV file’s date field(s) to fit MySQL’s preferred date format (YYYY-MM-DD). This sounds easy enough, but when you save to a CSV it always defaults to the “standard” format of MM/DD/YY. Quoth Mr. Barrie Backhurst:

MySQL’s country of origin is Sweden and.setting this as language in cell
styles works.

Open the stylist(F11), right click the default cell style and select
New. It should open a dialog with the Organize tab visible. Enter a
suitable name(mysqldate) in place of “untitled”. Switch to the Number
tab and set Category = Date, Language = Swedish and Format = YYYY-MM-DD.
Click OK to save the new cell style.

Now select the cells with the dates that need formatting and double left
click on the new mysqldate cell style. The selected cells should adopt
the mysql format and retain it when exported to CSV.

Worked like a charm Mr. Backhurst. Thanks!

Macromedia Contribute, webdav, and SSI

this is my optional excerpt

Long story short: Contribute 3 destroys SSI directives when publishing via webdav. Can someone prove me wrong?

So I’m messing around with Macromedia Contribute 3 and webdav on my dev linux box. This is my first time using Contribute, and it’s my first time using webdav. The one-two punch of cluelessness. Since every Web site that’s more than 4 pages should use SSI, that’s what I was trying to do. Well, whenever I editted a page in Contribute that used includes strange things happened.

Contribute was pulling the contents of the SSI out, and plopping them in place of the SSI directive. Thus, breaking my SSIs by statically placing the data into the file I was editting. Needless to say, this pissed me off.

I read everywhere that Contribute and SSI do in fact get along. I’ll spare you the boring tales of all the things I tried in order to locate the issue. I thought perhaps webdav was the problem. I switched to using SFTP and *poof* that did it. I can now edit shtml files with Contribute. I hope this saved some others some grief!