Less known properties of Session Class

Session is the one of the API classes provided by PeopleSoft to interact with system variables. PeopleCode developers writing code for component interface must have been very much familiar with the session class. People might have visited the session class documentation in PeopleBooks as well. I have visited the page many a times. But what had surprised me was some of the properties of session class which may prove to be very handy when you work for localization, has never caught my attention. Normally these properties will not catch your attention.

The Session Class has three major classes as its property. The PS Message Class, Regional Settings Class and Trace Setting class. Everyone who might have worked with CI’s might be already familiar with the Message Classes. And the Trace Class is to enable various trace parameters via PeopleCode. What I feel most useful and the less known is the Regional Settings class.

If you are working for a customer who is spread globally and you are asked to write code which will work for each regions, then the Regional Setting class will become handy. Some of the major properties of the regional setting class are ClientTimeZone (returns the time zone of the client), Currency Format, DateFormat, DateSeparator, LanguageCode etc. There are some more properties for this class, which you can get by referring PeopleBooks. So what is the highlight? Each of these properties, take example of DateFormat, will return the format in which dates needs to be displayed for that particular logged in user based on the user preference, browser settings, market and overall settings. So finally the property will return a value specifying which format should be used to display a date for a user in a region using that specific browser.

Similarly the Date Separator method will return the separator that should be used to display dates for a user. You can use these properties and display items to a user as per his own regional settings. Now the next question is how to use these properties. You cannot use the property directly because it is a property of a property of the session class. Below is an example of how to use the properties pertaining to regional settings.

&sSeperator = %Session.RegionalSettings.DateSeparator;

Interested in exploring all the available properties? You can visit the below PeopleBook link to get the details on all the available properties.

http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E25688_01/pt852pbr0/eng/psbooks/tpcr/book.htm