xxf:format-duration() extension function

[ebruchez]

Signature could be:

xxf:format-duration($duration as xs:duration, $format as xs:string) as xs:string

The question becomes: what should the format string be? Possibilities:

• plain format string with placeholders, with i18n handled behind the scene (like with Saxon Numberer)
• xxf:format-message() format, receiving all the parts as a sequence
• combination of format string and xxf:format-message() format
  • first determines overall layout
  • second determines format of a part, receiving (part, duration) tuples

Requirements:

• must support i18n
• must properly handle plurals ("1 day" vs. "2 days")
• Q: should support option to limit precision, as in "1 day 7 hours ago" vs. "4 months 25 days ago", without printing minutes/seconds? Or should be other function?

Se also DurationFormatUtils.

[ebruchez]

Important thing: durations can depend on a context date, as months and years have different durations!

[dmccreary]

This would be a very useful function to have. Using binding rules to extract the months, days, hours etc. from the duration and present the results are making our forms complex.

Thanks for considering this feature.

[ebruchez]

example of expression to format a duration