Use swedish format in datetime2

Question

I'm trying to use swedish date format by when using the package datetime2. I have found the following link https://www.ctan.org/pkg/datetime2-swedish but I don't understand how to call for this one. Could anyone help me? This is what I am trying to do:

\documentclass[paper=a4,fontsize=11pt]{article} 
\usepackage{datetime2}

\begin{document}   
\begin{minipage}{1\textwidth}
\begin{flushright}
\Large{ \textbf{ Joe Biden }}
\noindent

\hfill \today
\end{flushright}
\end{minipage}
\end{document}

I want this to write e.g. 4e november 2016

As can be seen in the answers and comments this was a problem that was due to a temp.cls - file that was used in a template that I used. Although it has answers on questions when not using this as well.

Thanks!

Answer 1

The comments on @daleif's answer have become a little convoluted, so it's probably easier if I try to summarise it here as an extension to the other answer.

LaTeX's default format of \today is the US style in the form "November 4, 2016". For example:

\documentclass{article}

\begin{document}
\today
\end{document}

The babel package loaded with the option swedish redefines \today to use the Swedish form "4 november 2016":

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[swedish]{babel}

\begin{document}
\today
\end{document}

However, you can't customise this if you want to make some slight modifications (such as have "4e" instead of just "4") and there's also no provision for formatting a specific date. The datetime2 package provides this extra functionality, but it needs to know what language you're using in your document. Luckily, datetime2 loads the tracklang package which can find out whether babel or polyglossia or whatever has been used, and it can tell datetime2 what language(s) you've already requested.

So you can just do:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[swedish]{babel}
\usepackage[useregional=text]{datetime2}

\begin{document}
\today
\end{document}

Which produces "4 november 2016" (or you can useregional=numeric to get a numeric date in your regional format). Thanks to the tracklang package, datetime2 knows that it needs to load datetime2-swedish.ldf, which provides the Swedish date styles (swedish and swedish-numeric). It's this datetime2-swedish.ldf file that provides the command \DTMswedishordinal which formats the ordinal part of the swedish textual date style.

This can be redefined. For example:

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[swedish]{babel}
\usepackage[useregional=text]{datetime2}

\renewcommand*{\DTMswedishordinal}[1]{\number#1e}

\begin{document}
\today
\end{document}

This produces "4e november 2016".

Other variations include specifying the language as a document class option:

\documentclass[swedish]{article}

\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[useregional=text]{datetime2}

\renewcommand*{\DTMswedishordinal}[1]{\number#1e}

\begin{document}

\today

\end{document}

In fact, datetime2 can be used without babel. For example

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[swedish]{datetime2}

\renewcommand*{\DTMswedishordinal}[1]{\number#1e}

\begin{document}

\today

\end{document}

Things that can go wrong:

• The package loading is in the wrong order. If babel is loaded after datetime2 instead of before, it's too late for datetime2 to override babel's date hook. It's also too late to pick up the required language unless it's been passed as a document class option or directly to datetime2.

• The class or another package might try redefining \today at the start of the document. For example, the following mimics a class that does this:

  \AtBeginDocument{\def\today{\ifcase\month\or January\or February\or March\or
  April\or May\or June\or July\or August\or September\or October\or
  November\or December\fi \space \number \day, \number \year}}
  
  \documentclass{article}
  
  \usepackage[swedish]{babel}
  \usepackage[useregional=text]{datetime2}
  
  \renewcommand*{\DTMswedishordinal}[1]{\number#1e}
  
  \begin{document}
  \today
  \end{document}
  

  This now produces "November 4, 2016" because of the redefinition in \AtBeginDocument.

There's also the possibility that another package loaded after datetime2 does something similar. To provide a way to counteract this, datetime2 provides \DTMtoday (new to version 1.4) which is datetime2's version of \today. You can use it directly or redefine \today at the beginning of the document:

\AtBeginDocument{\def\today{\ifcase\month\or January\or February\or March\or
April\or May\or June\or July\or August\or September\or October\or
November\or December\fi \space \number \day, \number \year}}

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[swedish]{babel}
\usepackage[useregional=text]{datetime2}

\renewcommand*{\DTMswedishordinal}[1]{\number#1e}

\begin{document}
\DTMtoday
\end{document}

This produces "4e november 2016", even though \today is back to the original US style. Alternatively:

\AtBeginDocument{\def\today{\ifcase\month\or January\or February\or March\or
April\or May\or June\or July\or August\or September\or October\or
November\or December\fi \space \number \day, \number \year}}

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[swedish]{babel}
\usepackage[useregional=text]{datetime2}

\renewcommand*{\DTMswedishordinal}[1]{\number#1e}

\begin{document}
\let\today\DTMtoday

\today
\end{document}

If you have an old version of datetime2 that doesn't recognise \DTMtoday, then you can save and restore datetime2's version of \today like this:

\AtBeginDocument{\def\today{\ifcase\month\or January\or February\or March\or
April\or May\or June\or July\or August\or September\or October\or
November\or December\fi \space \number \day, \number \year}}

\documentclass{article}

\usepackage[swedish]{babel}
\usepackage[useregional=text]{datetime2}
\let\dtmtoday\today

\renewcommand*{\DTMswedishordinal}[1]{\number#1e}

\begin{document}
\let\today\dtmtoday

\today
\end{document}

It turns out the problem is because your class file temp.cls is loading babel with english. This means that the main document language is English not Swedish so you effectively have a situation analogous to:

\documentclass[swedish]{article}
\usepackage[english]{babel}

\begin{document}
\today
\end{document}

This sets the main language to english with swedish as an auxiliary language. You can override this by inserting the following line before the document class is loaded:

\PassOptionsToPackage{main=swedish}{babel}

This will ensure that babel recognises that swedish is the main document language.

Answer 2

Do you really write it as 4e november in Sweden, in DK we use 4. november

Here is an example that works, but does not give you quite the correct output.

 \documentclass[a4paper,swedish]{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[utf8]{inputenc}
\usepackage{babel}
\usepackage[useregional=text]{datetime2}

\begin{document}   
 \today

\end{document}