Hi all!

I’m currently working on a phoenix web application which should be available in different languages. Therefore I need to localize e.g. numbers, datetimes etc. I’ve correctly set up ex_cldr, but I wonder how to use it correctly in phoenix templates? The default Cldr.to_string/1 function works for numbers but I need to use different formats for datetimes throughout the application. As the Cldr.to_string/1 function cannot take further parameters (e.g. a keyword list), I think the only option is to use one of the Cldr.Datetime.to_string functions, but the returned data is an ok/error tuple {:ok, "formated_string"} | {:error, ...}. Using the “bang function” is not always possible, because some datetime fields in the schema are allowed to be nil.

So, do I need to write some kind of “wrapper function(s)” on my own? In Rails, when the type of data is not the expected one, either nil or a string with the unformatted data is returned. What is the best practice here?

I’ve written the following wrapper function, but is there a default way to work with ex_cldr in phoenix?

def l(formatter, value, options \\ []) when is_atom(formatter) do
    case apply(formatter, :to_string, [value, options]) do
      {:ok, formatted_value} -> formatted_value
      _formatting_failed -> Keyword.get(options, :default, "")
    end
  end

which is called in a template with e.g.

<%= l(Cldr.DateTime, schema.my_datetime, format: "dd.MM.YYYY - HH:mm") %>
# => 03.10.2022 - 09:32

Many thanks!