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toDate(dateString) Converts a date in text into an actual date type. |
Function: toDate()
Converts a standard PhixFlow date string (e.g. 20120521 or 20120521.172108) into a true date, or a non-standard date string into a true date if supplied with a format pattern.
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Returns null if dateString is null.
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Beware of daylight savings clock changes! In countries where daylight savings are applied, at the point of the year when the clocks go forward, a hour will be lost. If you have a date and time that happen to fall into this missing hour, when you run a toDate() on the value, you will get an error like
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Syntax
toDate(dateString)
toDate(dateString, formatString)
| Argument | Type | Description |
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| dateString | String | String to be converted into a date. |
| formatString | String | Optional argument that which allows for |
| a Date and Time Format Patterns to represent the format of dateString. |
Examples
toDate("20100714")Returns the date 14/07/2010.
toDate(in.ChargeDate,"yyyy/MM/dd HH:mm:ss")
where in.ChargeDate has the value "2002/12/09 09:03:42", returns the date/time 09/12/2002 09:03:42
toDate(in.ChargeDate,"yyyy MMM d, HH-mm-ss")
where in.ChargeDate has the value "2002 Dec 9, 09-03-42", returns the date/time 09/12/2002 09:03:42
toDate("2010.July.04 AD 12:08 PM","y.MMM.d G h:m a")
Returns the date/time 04/07/2010 12:08:00
Date Format Pattern
The following values are available for use in dateFormat patterns:
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The number of letters used in the pattern determines the format.
- Text: If the number of pattern letters is 4 or more, the full form is used; otherwise a short or abbreviated form is used if available.
- Number: The minimum number of digits. Shorter numbers are zero-padded to this amount.
- Year: Numeric presentation for year and weekyear fields are handled specially. For example, if the count of 'y' is 2, the year will be displayed as the zero-based year of the century, which is two digits.
- Month: 3 or over, use text, otherwise use number.
- Zone: 'Z' outputs offset without a colon, 'ZZ' outputs the offset with a colon, 'ZZZ' or more outputs the zone id.
- Zone names: Time zone names ('z') cannot be parsed.
- Any characters in the pattern that are not in the ranges of ['a'..'z'] and ['A'..'Z'] will be treated as quoted text. For instance, characters like ':', '.', ' ', '#' and '?' will appear in the resulting time text even they are not embraced within single quotes.
See Also
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