Is there a reference for Siri Shortcut formats?

Hi. I’m trying to understand the formats passed by variables and selectors in the Siri shortcut app (nee, Workflow). Specifically, I wanted to understand things like Date and Time formats, so I understand how they get parsed by other functions. For example, in they Copy Event to Work Calendar (Episode 1), it gets passed a Calendar Event object and you select the Start Date. However, this is parsed with a custom format of “EEEEE”. I don’t understand what is returned by this.

So, is there any reference material to this stuff. Googling doesn’t seem to show anything like that.

Thanks, David

This is a “Date Format Pattern”, the Unicode ones (generally used, and used in Shortcuts) are documented here:

http://unicode.org/reports/tr35/tr35-31/tr35-dates.html#Date_Format_Patterns

1 Like

For what it’s worth, Apple’s documentation on Workflow covers the full gamut of the date format, all the way through to the Unicode standard no. 35 referenced above by @RosemaryOrchard.

Hopefully those docs will hang around for a while given not all iOS devices will run iOS12 & Shortcuts, but it has me wondeing if there’s any official docs out for Shortcuts yet.

Not to torpedo the thread, but has anyone seen any such Apple documentation out there in public yet?

There’s a few pages, this seems to be the best one:

2 Likes

Thank you @sylumer and @RosemaryOrchard for the information on date formats and the Siri Shortcuts user guide. I had subsequently found it in the Help link in the Shortcuts app (which is an awfully logical place to put it). Many thanks.