Other calendars (besides Gregorian) available?

Question

Hi! :)

I was wondering whether it's possible to integrate other calendar systems (besides the Gregorian one used in many countries) when using the text input restriction "Date (display calendar to select from)". For example, we are collecting data in Israel, where the Hebrew calendar is the official one, and in Iran, where the Hijri calendar is used.

Solutions I have considered:
- Providing a link for participants to convert from Hebrew/Hijri to Gregorian. Cumbersome and kind of disrespectful.
- Not use a calendar input. But then this gets messy, especially with users of Gregorian using so many different formats (DD-MM-YYYY, MM/DD/YY, etc.), and we can't trust that they stick to whatever format we tell them to use. (Plus, "MM" is meaningless in the Hebrew calendar, since the names of the months aren't abbreviated like that.)

Is there an integration of the Hebrew calendar (and others?) that I may have missed - for example, when changing the language settings to Hebrew? Or could this be integrated?

Thanks! :)

Best

Answer 1

That is a very good question, and I do not have an imediate answer to it.

Technically it should be a simple task for SoSci Survey to convert between the gregorian an the hebrew calender - there is a PHP function that does the work. The challenge may be to identify which format was received, but I assume you would usually write a hebrew date in hebrew numbers?

I personally, lack hebrew language background to read hebrew dates. Are you sufficiently firm in reading hebrew dates? Then send me an email to info@soscisurvey.de with a few examples and where to find day, month, and year in these examples.

That should allow me to detect hebrew dates in the inputs, and - maybe - write hebrew dates when using hebrew as output language. SoSci Survey would then store gregorian dates internally.