Doing some testing, I found that #time will return the formatting string unmodified if the string has no recognized code (or throw an error if the date object is bad). However, it does not appear that #time has a null code to return the date/time object unmodified (or throw an error if the date object is bad). This behavior would be useful for several templates using #time for data validation that would otherwise want to defer to the user (or source) for date formatting. It also seems to me like it would be an expected feature for any parser function, unless I'm missing something. SamuelRiv (talk) 22:26, 5 April 2024 (UTC)
Topic on Help talk:Extension:ParserFunctions
Could you please demonstrate the current and desired behavior using an example?
Unrecognized or blank formatting string: {{#time:q|1999-01-01}} ; {{#time:|1999-01-01}} ;
q ; ;
What I request is a formatting string code that validates the date/time object and returns the date/time object string unmodified if valid. Something like {{#time:NULL|1999-01-01}} ; {{#time:NULL|1999-99-99}} would return output 1999-01-01 ; ERROR_CODE.
The reason for requesting this is it seems like null behavior is missing in either case -- the current behavior seems to indicate that some null date would output the formatting string unmodified, but that function is not present either (I don't know what the use case is for outputting unrecognized characters in lieu of an error code). Either way, some kind of null function behavior should be expected unless there's a good reason. (Alternatively, validation should be separable from reformatting.) SamuelRiv (talk) 03:30, 10 April 2024 (UTC)
Can’t you use #iferror?
{{#iferror:{{#time:|{{{1}}} }}|Error|{{{1}}} }}