6.11 Updating Field Types

The type of each field can be updated individually using the Configure source panel and then selecting the new type for each field using the selector provided for each field. (See Figure 6.16 .) Text, items and date-time fields also offer additional specific configurations.

6.11.1 Date-time formats configuration

In the case of date-time fields, it might happen that BigML is not able to determine the right format. In that case, you can select the specific format of your fields by clicking in the configuration icon shown in Figure 6.17 . You can choose any of the pre-defined formats included in Figure 5.5 among the selector options.

If you do not find the format of your date-time field in the pre-defined options you can also configure your own format using the option “Other”. (See Figure 6.18 .)

This custom option allows you to input any string using the Java DateTimeFormatter specification for date-time patterns. For example, for month and year you need to use the upper-case letters MM and YY, while for day you need to use the lower-case letters dd. See an example of a custom date format in Figure 6.18 where the date is written as MMddYY, i.e., 100314 meaning 3rd of October 2014.