Nectar - Events Issues (times and dates)

[noje]

That's the point, format has always been set to day, month, year.

[gandalf]

Ok, I did not have a problem right now. But it's time to re-investigate
R.

[gandalf]

I've still not found the issue. But the attached tgz will help logging.

Unpack as usual.
Then, please save ./plugins/settings/include/mailer.php.
Copy ./plugins/nectar/0.8.7g/mailer.php to ./plugins/settings/include/mailer.php

Goto Settings -> Misc and set NECTAR logging level to at least MEDIUM. Now, you'll find NECTAR messages in log/cacti.log. It will log each call to the internal datetime function and more. Please provide those lines after a new try

R.

Unfortunately, I had to fix two errors that dropped in due excessive copying between different directories on my laptop.
Please drop old code and replace by the new

[noje]

Thanks R,
At the moment I cannot introduce any changes in the Cacti server as it is production environment in my company. I will try as soon as possible and i'll let you know the results.

[TAM]

I see the same issue, every time I make a change to anything on the page and save, the mailtime reverts to the current date/time.

Anyone else still having this issue?

Just installed Nectar yesterday 0.30 (replaced mailer.php file)

Cacti Version - 0.8.7g
Plugin Architecture - 2.8
Poller Type - Cactid v

Troy

[TAM]

I changed my users Graph Date Display Format from "Month Name, Day, Year" to "Month Number, Day, Year" and that appears to have corrected the issue.

[Selenius]

Hello!

Regardless of the graphs' settings, plugin only takes format "Month Number/Day/Year".
If you use any other format for input in a "Next Timestamp for sending Mail Report", it doesn't work.

P. S. My version is 0.30.

[ProfAnthrax]

Has this been resolved at all?
I'm seeing the same problem (Next timestamp changes to current system date and time) and need to know how to resolve.


Thanks,
Paul.

[gandalf]

Please provide you exact time format and the settings of the related nectar report. I'll (hopefully) try to reproduce the issue, then
R.

[pabloc]

Dear Sirs,

(First of all, it's my first time I post something to the forum - I really like Cacti/plugins a lot).

I was doing some research (try & error + analizing code) because I had the some problem. Just to give my 2 cent's:

• - I faced the same problem with Non-US date/time formats. (In Argentina, we use 'dd-mm-yyyy hh:mm:ss'). Common date separators: slash char '/', dash char '-'.
  - The problem (I think so) has relationship with PHP's strtotime behaviour: http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php.

Proof of concept:

Code: Select all

<?php

$it_doesnt_work_mailtime="27/02/2013 09:00:00";
$it_works_mailtime="02/27/2013 09:00:00";
$it_works2_mailtime="27-02-2013 09:00:00";

print "This string do not work: ".$it_doesnt_work_mailtime."\n";
$timestamp=strtotime($it_doesnt_work_mailtime);
if ($timestamp=="") { $timestamp="empty"; };
print "timestamp: $timestamp\n";
print "\n";

$timestamp=strtotime($it_works_mailtime);
if ($timestamp=="") { $timestamp="empty"; };
print "This string works: ".$it_works_mailtime."\n";
print "timestamp: $timestamp\n";

$timestamp=strtotime($it_works_mailtime);
if ($timestamp=="") { $timestamp="empty"; };
print "This string works too: ".$it_works2_mailtime."\n";
print "timestamp: $timestamp\n";

?>

Look inside the following paragraph, the 'note' (taken from http://php.net/manual/en/function.strtotime.php)

Note:

Dates in the m/d/y or d-m-y formats are disambiguated by looking at the separator between the various components: if the separator is a slash (/), then the American m/d/y is assumed; whereas if the separator is a dash (-) or a dot (.), then the European d-m-y format is assumed.

To avoid potential ambiguity, it's best to use ISO 8601 (YYYY-MM-DD) dates or DateTime::createFromFormat() when possible.

Yes, you're right. 'strtotime' function doesn't work as expected.

There is no easy way for the function 'strtotime' to avoid 'guessing' the right format (Personally, I think it's better to use ISO 8601 format, at least for internal uses).
You can get rid of this problem with some new features from php >= 5.3.0. Also you can get rid of this problem by using some 'C' alike functions for php (but they don't work with MS Windows)


Here it goes a patch for this date/time format issue which tries to avoid those known problems: (Hope it helps - Tested on Cacti 0.8.8a + Nectar plugin v0.35a)

nectar-v0.35a_sanitize_datetime_strings.patch.gz

Patch for php's strtotime issue.

(1.32 KiB) Downloaded 2951 times

Download and apply with:

gzip -dc nectar-v0.35a_sanitize_datetime_strings.patch.gz | patch -p0

Note: I'm running Cacti v0.8.8a + Spine v0.8.8 + plugins (including Nectar v0.35a) on a FreeBSD 8.3p4 box at work.

Regards,
Pablo Carboni.

[gandalf]

I will consider this on the next update cycle. But I will have to test as well
R.