How to clean up date field values migrated from old Sitecore versions

Question

After migrating content from Sitecore 6.5 I see dates staying not in canonical 8+ Sitecore format.

Some samples (raw values) from my current project:

• 20140329T120917 - no Z at the end
• 20140329T123823:635316935030258782 - no need for so many digits

All dates created in Sitecore 8 (I checked Created and Updated fields) follow the same yyyyMMddTHHmmssZ pattern.

What is the best way to change dates format when content is moved from old Sitecore version to a new one?

Answer 1

Here is a prototype for you to test with in your non-production instance.

Sitecore PowerShell Extensions

$items = @(Get-Item -Path "master:\content\home") + @(Get-ChildItem -Path "master:\content\home")
$expression = "\d{8}[T]\d{6}"
foreach($item in $items) {
    $item.BeginEdit() | Out-Null
    if($item.Fields["__Created"].HasValue -and ($item.Fields["__Created"].Value -match $expression)) {
        $item.Fields["__Created"].Value = $matches[0]
    }

    if($item.Fields["__Updated"].HasValue -and ($item.Fields["__Updated"].Value -match $expression)) {
        $item.Fields["__Updated"].Value = $matches[0]
    }
    $item.EndEdit() | Out-Null
}

The code finds the home item and the immediate children, then looks for dates that have values and matches the pattern you specified. I'm accessing the value directly on the field since it gives the raw value (rather than a datetime).

Answer 2

PSE sounds like a goer, though if you're not comfortable with PowerShell and as it's a migration project which you're going to re-run then you could do something with the rules engine.

On the 8.x instance when the content item from 6.x saves, have a rule which examine the date fields and change as appropriate.

Can only find an old cookbook (https://sdn.sitecore.net/upload/sitecore6/61/rules_engine_cookbook_sc61_a4.pdf) on the rules engine as I'm on a train with a dodgy web connection