Template:Birth date/doc

The Birth date and Birth date and age templates will return a person’s date of birth and optionally his/her age. They have the shortcuts dob and bda, respectively.

Using this template rather than simply inserting the date into articles allows for the inclusion of hidden metadata about the date. This metadata can be used by web browsers and other software tools to extract the details, and display them using some other website or mapping tool, index or search them.

To display the birth date only


Do not use with non-Gregorian dates because the resulting hCard hidden date will be false.

To display a birth date with calculated age


This form is only intended for living persons. In the rare case that a living person's birth date is given in a non-Gregorian calendar this template should not be used. The parameter names 'year', 'month', and 'day' can be used instead of the first, second, and third parameters for 'Birth date and age' only. These parameter names are not available for the 'Birth date' template.

Bda is a redirect to Birth date and age


Examples:


 * returns "February 4, 1993"
 * returns "February 4, 1993"
 * returns "February 24, 1993"
 * returns "February 24, 1993"


 * returns February 4, 1993
 * returns February 4, 1993
 * returns February 24, 1993
 * returns February 24, 1993

Month First (mf) and Day First (df) options
The df (day first) and mf (month first) parameters indicate the intended date format to display. The appropriate parameter should be set to "y" or "yes" e.g. df=yes or mf=y.

The default output of this template is to display the month before the day. This default may not be appropriate for articles about people from parts of the world where the day precedes the month in a date. In such articles the parameter, "df", should be set to display the day before the month.

The parameter "mf", while not actually used by the template, will indicate that month first format is intended. Using these parameters can assist bots or other automated processing to detect which date format is intended; leaving the format as default may lead an editor or bot to change the format to an unintended value.

Do not specify both "df" and "mf" parameters in the same use of the template, as these formats are mutually exclusive.

Examples:


 * displays "February 24, 1993".


 * displays "February 24, 1993".


 * displays "February 24, 1993".


 * displays "February 24, 1993".

hCard microformat
The templates also returns the date, hidden by CSS, in the ISO 8601 format (but not necessarily to the ISO 8601 standard) needed by hCard microformats. for example:



Note: for the "foundation", "built" and similar set-up dates of companies, buildings, etc., use Start date (this will work for year-only or month-year dates).

See the microformats project for details.