BDE 4.14.0 Production release
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Provide conversions between date/time objects and FIX strings.
This component provides a namespace, bdlt::FixUtil
, containing functions that convert bdlt
date, time, and datetime objects to and from ("generate" and "parse", respectively) corresponding string representations that are compliant with the FIX standard. The version of the FIX standard that is the basis for this component can be found at:
In general terms, FixUtil
functions support what FIX refers to as complete representations in extended format. We first present a brief overview before delving into the details of the FIX representations that are supported for each of the relevant bdlt
vocabulary types.
Each function that generates FIX strings (named generate
and generateRaw
) takes a bdlt
object and a char *
buffer, bsl::string
, or bsl::ostream
, and writes a FIX representation of the object to the buffer, string, or stream. The "raw" functions are distinguished from their non-"raw" counterparts in three respects:
char *
buffer is not supplied to the generateRaw
functions.generateRaw
functions do not output a null terminator.generate
functions that provide an int bufferLength
parameter truncate the generated output to bufferLength
characters. (Neither the generateRaw
functions nor the generate
functions taking bsl::string
or bsl::ostream
do any truncation of their generated output.)Since the generate functions always succeed, no status value is returned. Instead, either the number of characters output to the char *
buffer or string, or a reference to the stream, is returned. (Note that the generating functions also take an optional bdlt::FixUtilConfiguration
object, which is discussed shortly.)
Each function that parses FIX strings (named parse
) take the address of a target bdlt
object and a const char *
(paired with a length
argument) or bsl::string_view
, and loads the object with the result of parsing the character string. Since parsing can fail, the parse functions return an int
status value (0 for success and a non-zero value for failure). Note that, besides elementary syntactical considerations, the validity of parsed strings are subject to the semantic constraints imposed by the various isValid*
class methods (i.e., Date::isValidYearMonthDay
, Time::isValid
, etc.).
As this component concerns FIX, some terms from that specification are used liberally in what follows. Two FIX terms of particular note are timezone offset and fractional second.
A FIX timezone offset corresponds to what other bdlt
components commonly refer to as a timezone offset (or simply as an offset; e.g., see bdlt_datetimetz ). For example, the FIX string 20020317-15:46:00+04:00
has a timezone offset of +04:00
, indicating a timezone 4 hours ahead of UTC.
A FIX fractional second corresponds to, for example, combined millisecond
and microsecond
attributes of a bdlt::Datetime
or bdlt::Time
object. For example, the Time
value (and FIX string) 15:46:09.330
has a millisecond
attribute value of 330; i.e., a fractional second of .33.
Strings produced by the generate
and generateRaw
functions are a straightforward transposition of the attributes of the source bdlt
value into an appropriate FIX format, and are best illustrated by a few examples. Note that for Datetime
, DatetimeTz
, and Time
, the fractional second is generated with the precision specified in the configuration. Also note that for TimeTz
, no fractional second is generated (as per the FIX specification for "TZTimeOnly").
Note that the FIX specification does not have an equivalent to bdlt::DateTz
.
The generate
and generateRaw
functions provide an optional configuration parameter. This optional parameter, of type FixUtilConfiguration
, enables configuration of two aspects of FIX string generation:
Z
is output for the timezone offset instead of +00:00
(UTC).FixUtilConfiguration
has two attributes that directly correspond to these aspects. In addition, for generate methods that are not supplied with a configuration argument, a process-wide configuration takes effect. See bdlt_fixutilconfiguration for details.
The parse functions accept all strings that are produced by the generate functions. In addition, the parse functions accept some variation in the generated strings, the details of which are discussed next. Note that the parse methods are not configurable like the generate methods (i.e., via an optional FixUtilConfiguration
argument). Moreover, the process-wide configuration has no effect on parsing either. Instead, the parse methods automatically treat +00:00
and Z
as equivalent timezone offsets (both denoting UTC). Finally, the parsing allows seconds to be optionally specified in all types, which is in contradiction to some of the types in the referenced FIX protocol specification.
The timezone offset is optional, and can be present when parsing for any type, i.e., even for Date
, Time
, and Datetime
. If a timezone offset is parsed for a Date
, it must be valid, so it can affect the status value that is returned in that case, but it is otherwise ignored. For Time
and Datetime
, any timezone offset present in the parsed string will affect the resulting object value (unless the timezone offset denotes UTC) because the result is converted to UTC. If the timezone offset is absent, it is treated as if +00:00
were specified:
In the last example above, the conversion to UTC incurs a carry into the day
attribute of the Date
component of the resulting Datetime
value. Note that if such a carry causes an underflow or overflow at the extreme ends of the valid range of dates (0001/01/01 and 9999/12/31), then parsing for Datetime
fails.
The fractional second is optional. When the fractional second is absent, it is treated as if .0
were specified. When the fractional second is present, it can have one or more digits (in divergence with the referenced FIX protocol document, which indicates the fractional second may be unspecified or have a positive multiple of three digits). Although FIX has provision for picosecond (or finer) time resolution, be aware that bdlt
is limited to microsecond resolution. If more than six digits are included in the fractional second, values are rounded to a full microsecond; i.e., values greater than or equal to .5 microseconds are rounded up. These roundings may incur a carry of one second into the second
attribute:
Note that, for Datetime
and DatetimeTz
, if a carry due to rounding of the fractional second causes an overflow at the extreme upper end of the valid range of dates (i.e., 9999/12/31), then parsing fails.
Leap seconds are not representable by bdlt::Time
or bdlt::Datetime
. Hence, they are not produced by any of the FixUtil
generate functions. However, positive leap seconds are supported by the parse functions. A leap second is recognized when the value parsed for the second
attribute of a Time
is 60 – regardless of the values parsed for the hour
, minute
, and millisecond
attributes. Note that this behavior is more generous than that afforded by the FIX specification (which indicates that a positive leap second can only be represented as "23:59:60Z").
When a leap second is detected during parsing of a FIX string, the second
attribute is taken to be 59, so that the value of the Time
object can be validly set; then an additional second is added to the object. Note that the possible carry incurred by a leap second (i.e., when loading the result of parsing into a Datetime
or DatetimeTz
object) has the same potential for overflow as may occur with fractional seconds that are rounded up (although in admittedly pathological cases).
Although 24:00 is representable by bdlt
, i.e., as the default value for bdlt::Time
, "24:00:00.000" is not a valid string in the FIX protocol. As per other methods acting upon 24:00 within bdlt
, an hour
attribute value of 24 is mapped to 0 by the generate functions provided by this component:
Finally, a string representing 24:00 is rejected by the bdlt::FixUtil
parse methods.
The syntax description below summarizes the FIX string representations supported by this component. Although not quoted (for readability), [+-:.Z]
are literal characters that can occur in FIX strings. The characters [YMDhms]
each denote a decimal digit, {}
brackets optional elements, ()
is used for grouping, and |
separates alternatives:
This section illustrates intended use of this component.
This example demonstrates basic use of one generate
function and two parse
functions.
First, we construct a few objects that are prerequisites for this and the following example:
Then, we construct a bdlt::DatetimeTz
object for which a corresponding FIX-compliant string will be generated shortly:
For comparison with the FIX string generated below, note that streaming the value of sourceDatetimeTz
to stdout
:
produces:
Next, we use a generate
function to produce a FIX-compliant string for sourceDatetimeTz
, writing the output to a bsl::ostringstream
, and assert that both the return value and the string that is produced are as expected:
For comparison, see the output that was produced by the streaming operator above.
Now, we parse the string that was just produced, loading the result of the parse into a second bdlt::DatetimeTz
object, and assert that the parse was successful and that the target object has the same value as that of the original (i.e., sourceDatetimeTz
):
Finally, we parse the fix
string a second time, this time loading the result into a bdlt::Datetime
object (instead of a bdlt::DatetimeTz
):
Note that this time the value of the target object has been converted to UTC.
This example demonstrates use of a bdlt::FixUtilConfiguration
object to influence the format of the FIX strings that are generated by this component by passing that configuration object to generate
. We also take this opportunity to illustrate the flavor of the generate
functions that outputs to a char *
buffer of a specified length.
First, we construct the bdlt::FixUtilConfiguration
object that indicates how we would like to affect the generated output FIX string. In this case, we want to have microsecond precision displayed:
Then, we define the char *
buffer that will be used to stored the generated string. A buffer of size bdlt::FixUtil::k_DATETIMETZ_STRLEN + 1
is large enough to hold any string generated by this component for a bdlt::DatetimeTz
object, including a null terminator:
Next, we use a generate
function that accepts our configuration
to produce a FIX-compliant string for sourceDatetimeTz
, this time writing the output to a char *
buffer, and assert that both the return value and the string that is produced are as expected. Note that in comparing the return value against BUFLEN - 1
we account for the fact that, although a null terminator was generated, it is not included in the character count returned by generate
. Also note that we use bsl::strcmp
to compare the resulting string knowing that we supplied a buffer having sufficient capacity to accommodate a null terminator:
For comparison, see the output that was produced by the streaming operator above.
Next, we parse the string that was just produced, loading the result of the parse into a second bdlt::DatetimeTz
object, and assert that the parse was successful and that the target object has the same value as that of the original (i.e., sourceDatetimeTz
). Note that BUFLEN - 1
is passed and not BUFLEN
because the former indicates the correct number of characters in buffer
that we wish to parse:
Then, we parse the string in buffer
a second time, this time loading the result into a bdlt::Datetime
object (instead of a bdlt::DatetimeTz
):
Note that this time the value of the target object has been converted to UTC.
Finally, we modify the configuration
to display the bdlt::DatetimeTz
without fractional seconds: