CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I was trying to import some event participants and have problems with the Register Date field.

I tried usind the standard format first from the export mm/dd/yyyy and it displays the error message on the download participant_register_date not a valid date: 5/19/2013

The only format that is accepting is yyyy-mm-dd and I cannot add any time.

Went to the demo site and recreated the problem.
For testing on the demo:

• Got 2 random participants in the current site for an event
• Export the minimum required fields: Participant ID, Event ID, Participant Status, and Register Date
• Changed the defaulted exported date 12/20/2009 to a different value (same format)
• Imported the file using Update and expected date format mm/dd/yyyy
• Download errors shows participant_register_date not a valid date: 5/28/2013
• Changed csv date format to yyyy-mm-dd and it loads OK
• But if you change date format to yyyy-mm-dd h:mm gets a DB Error: unknown error

We were also getting this import errors in 4.4.1 with dates of format 12/31/2012. We did not try importing times, however we did notice that the selection of date format had no effect on the parsing of the date. We were only able to use the yyyy-mm-dd format. The code below shows that the date type SHOULD be taken into account, but it is not -- it just defaults to the regular.
We also received a DB error, and after enabling backtrace we discovered it was because the registered_by_id was getting set to a contact ID that did not exist. Do you guys think it makes sense to add a check in the code for that?

from CRM/Event/Import/Parser/Participant.php

    $dateType = $session->get('dateTypes');
...
        if ($dateValue = CRM_Utils_Date::formatDate($params[$key], $dateType)) {
          $params[$key] = $dateValue;
        }
        else {
          CRM_Contact_Import_Parser_Contact::addToErrorMsg('Register Date', $errorMessage);
        }