I've searched extensively, but haven't found a reasonable solution to my problem. First, the issue:
I have a custom post type (Events) that I want a start and end time for. Simple. Gravity Forms has a built in Time field to use. Cool. The problem is that the format is "11:30 PM" or "23:30". Not exactly ideal for advanced sorting (I'm using the Types plugin for my custom fields and the Views plugin for the display.).
I have tons of options, and none of them are working. So please let me know which is easiest/most-robust/whatever:
1) Strip the colon and AM/PM from the custom field. Great, how would I go about doing that? If it was just "1130" instead of "11:30 AM", that would be much easier to use.
2) Convert it into a unix timestamp. Good in theory, but then it becomes burdened with a date as well. Which leads to...
3) Somehow combine date and time into one field.
4) Try an hour dropdown and a minute dropdown. Ok, I made those. How can I combine them? It looks like the math component only works on number fields, not dropdowns. Oh, and it also supposedly works on Products as well, though that didn't work for me either. If something has numerical values (as these do), then why can't calculations be enabled?
It's a bit similar to this: http://www.gravityhelp.com/forums/topic/adding-two-values-in-user-notification-shortcode
but instead of wanting the info for notification purposes, I wish to populate a custom field with the result.
Anyone have any ideas? Thanks.