Date formatting in emails

[partnerwerk]

It seems this is still an issue. However I found a (very fragile) workaround and just post it here for anybody who is interested:

Goal: have the results of multiple workflow functions in one line of html code in workflow emails.
Problem: If they are not seperated by a line break or several spaces they „eat up” some of the code around, apparently even cannibalizing each other.

I wanted to have a custom field value and a date and time of an event in one line like this:

Quote:special appointment on Dec. 6, 2018 at 6.15 a.m.

The code I used is the following:

PHP Code:

<p>$cf_851 on $(general : (__WorkflowFunction__) format_date($date_start,'d. F Y') ) at $(general : (__WorkflowFunction__) substring($time_start,0,5) )</p> 


The result is that the time does not appear at all. So I seperated them on different lines like this:

PHP Code:

<p>$cf_851</p>
<p>on $(general : (__WorkflowFunction__) format_date($date_start,'d. F Y') ) </p>
<p>at $(general : (__WorkflowFunction__) substring($time_start,0,5) )</p> 


But that's ugly:

Quote:special appointment
on Dec. 6, 2018
at 6.15 a.m.

Seperating the functions in the html source code like this is working if...

PHP Code:

<p>$cf_851 
$(general : (__WorkflowFunction__) format_date($date_start,'d. F Y') ) 
at $(general : (__WorkflowFunction__) substring($time_start,0,5) )</p> 


Results in the desired formatting...
...if:
- you do not switch to the wysiwyg editor before saving
- if you never edit the email again without fixing these line breaks at the same time.