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Formatting Unix TV Dates for Ditto Without Relying on PHx
A practical date-formatting pattern for TV values stored as Unix timestamps.
When teams stored dates in TV fields as Unix timestamps, they often did it for a good reason: sorting. The next problem was output. A raw timestamp is not editor-friendly or presentation-friendly, so projects needed a clean way to format it in Ditto templates.
This article belongs in the archive because it captures a familiar Evo trade-off: store data in the most useful machine-friendly format first, then build a small formatting layer for display.
Why the pattern mattered
- it kept sorting reliable
- it avoided overloading PHx for every formatting task
- it made TV-driven dates more practical in real listings
Why this belongs in the timeline
Date formatting was a recurring pain point wherever TVs became data fields instead of plain text. Preserving these patterns helps explain how Evo developers balanced storage logic with display logic.
Showing Product Ratings and Vote Totals from Stored Fields in Evolution CMS
A practical pattern for calculating and displaying rating totals from stored review data.
Counting Child Resources for Ditto Output with a Small Evo Snippet
A lightweight pattern for calculating child counts and feeding them into listings.