Experience Sitecore !

You might came across Variant Template Field when going through rendering variants insert options and wondered, what is that? Variant Template Field is a special field that uses NVelocity templates (supported by Sitecore.NVelocity.dll) in order to render the value.

One of the MVPs - Michael West - has briefly mentioned built-in token tools coming with SXA. I decided to take a look on these tools. I found them in Sitecore.XA.Foundation.Variants.Abstractions.dll under Sitecore.XA.Foundation.Variants.Abstractions.NVelocityExtensions namespace. Here's their code:

public class DateTool
{
    public string Format(DateTime dateTime, string format) => dateTime.ToString(format);

    public string Format(string dateTimeString, string format)
    {
        DateTime time = DateUtil.IsoDateToDateTime(dateTimeString, DateTime.MinValue);
        if (time != DateTime.MinValue)
        {
            return time.ToString(format);
        }
        return dateTimeString;
    }
}

and

public sealed class NumberTool
{
    public string Format(double value, string format) => value.ToString(format, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    public string Format(int value, string format) => value.ToString(format, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
    public string Format(float value, string format) => value.ToString(format, CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
}

DateTool is used internally by another field type - VariantDateField, that's how it works. Let's say I have a template:

and it renders to: 

But you may also use it from templates (since it is already mapped) for example combining with your custom tools (not just this one line):

resulting with:

It is also briefly mentioned in the official documentation.