CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Updated - 12:15 PM EST

I went into the civicrm.settings.php file to allow for usage of smarty variables in the message templates. I checked for this line:

define( 'CIVICRM_MAIL_SMARTY', 0 );

... and changed the 0 to 1.

I was then able to use {$smarty.now|date_format} to put the date into the email message.

However, I wanted to put just the month name, so I changed the token to read {$smarty.now|date_format:"%B"}. However, that change to the code generates the following error message:

   

User error: Smarty error: [in string:

    {$smarty.now|date_format:'%B'}
    line 2]: syntax error: unrecognized tag: $smarty.now|date_format:'%B' (Smarty_Compiler.class.php, line 446) in Smarty->trigger_error() (line 1093 of /var/www/lcfcadmin/sites/all/modules/civicrm/packages/Smarty/Smarty.class.php).
    User error: Smarty error: [in string:

    {$smarty.now|date_format:'%B'}
    line 2]: syntax error: unrecognized tag '' (Smarty_Compiler.class.php, line 590) in Smarty->trigger_error() (line 1093 of /var/www/lcfcadmin/sites/all/modules/civicrm/packages/Smarty/Smarty.class.php).

I have downloaded Smarty 2.6.26, copied the demo to my Apache server and the demo works flawlessly. I also ran a diff against the Smarty_Compiler.class.php in CiviCRM and the same file from http://www.smarty.net and found no differences.

I have tried escaping the quotes, using single quotes, double quotes, back quotes - all to no avail.

It looks like you can't pass any strings to Smarty - should I file this as a bug?

I'm using CiviCRM 4.1.2 on Drupal 7.14

As always, thanks for the help!

I know I am late to the party, but I just wanted to post a work around to this problem since this was pretty much the only thread I found that addressed the issue. HUGE thanks to damaxl for providing the key to this solution.  damaxl is correct, the WYSIWYG editor does indeed change the single quotes into &#39 and I found no way to work around this, however, I did find the module that controls the date_format function, it is the modifier.date_format.php module located in the plugin folder for Smarty.  I am working with Joomla, so I can only give a direct path for Joomla,
which is /administrator/components/com_civicrm/civicrm/packages/Smarty/plugins/modifier.date_format.php. 

At the time of this writing, the line I changed number 31:

function smarty_modifier_date_format($string, $format = '%b %e, %Y', $default_date = '')

you can replace the '%b %e, %Y' with whatever format you want the function to default to and then just use {$smarty.now|date_format}.  It worked like a charm!  Unfortunately, you have to remember this change every time you upgrade CiviCRM.  So I just added it to my ever growing list!

I hope this helps someone!