Connectors / Helper / Date & Time Helpers
Date & Time Helpers
The Date & Time helpers allow you to manipulate date and time values of various formats from connectors and triggers.On this page
Overview
The Date & Time helpers allow you to manipulate date and time values of various formats from connectors and triggers. These are commonly used for tasks such as converting date/time values to different formats, or finding the difference between two date & time values.
Examples
Getting the current day of the week
Step 1 - Get the current date and time
In this example, we'll be getting the current day of the week. The first thing we need to do is establish the current date and time.
Start by dragging the Date & Time Helpers helper to a workflow and select Get current timestamp from the operation dropdown.
We'll use the default timezone (UTC) but you could select any timezone from the dropdown combo based on your own requirements.
Step 2 - Get the day of the week
Next, we'll use the current date and time from step 1 to get the current day of the week.
Drag the Date & Time Helpers helper to the workflow and select Get day of week from the operation dropdown.
Now connect the Date & time input of the Get day of week operation to the output of step 1 by using the Connector Snake.
The Get day of week operation will take the current date and time from step 1 and work out the day of the week. Again, select the Timezone that you wish to work in. We are keeping everything in UTC for this example.
You should now have a workflow that looks like this with the Date & time populated with the json path of the step 1 output $.steps.date-time-helpers-1.result:
All we need to do now is run the worflow...
Step 3 - Run the workflow
Once the workflow has executed, you will be able to see the input and output of the Get day of week operation in the debug panel.
As you can see, the date/time and timezone were passed as inputs and the operation calculated the day of the week as Wednesday for the operation output.
Formatting the date
A date string or timestamp can be formatted into a particular style of writing using the Format date operation of the Date & Time Helpers connector. For instance, '2006-01-22' is represented by YYYY-MM-DD, while 'Sun, January 22nd 2006' is represented by ddd, MMMM Do YYYY.
Note that you can escape said characters by using either \ or []. For example, when using the timezone reference: Z:
Date and Times can be represented in any way you want by combining the variables in the following table.
| Token | Output | |
|---|---|---|
| Year | YY | 70 71 ... 29 30 |
| YYYY | 1970 1971 ... 2029 2030 | |
| Quarter | Q | 1 2 3 4 |
| Qo | 1st 2nd 3rd 4th | |
| Month | M | 1 2 ... 11 12 |
| Mo | 1st 2nd ... 11th 12th | |
| MM | 01 02 ... 11 12 | |
| MMM | Jan Feb ... Nov Dec | |
| MMMM | January February ... November December | |
| Week of Year | W | 1 2 ... 52 53 |
| Wo | 1st 2nd ... 52nd 53rd | |
| WW | 01 02 ... 52 53 | |
| Day of Year | DDD | 1 2 ... 364 365 |
| DDDo | 1st 2nd ... 364th 365th | |
| DDDD | 001 002 ... 364 365 | |
| Day of Month | D | 1 2 ... 30 31 |
| Do | 1st 2nd ... 30th 31st | |
| DD | 01 02 ... 30 31 | |
| Day of Week | d | 0 1 ... 5 6 |
| E | 1 2 ... 6 7 | |
| do | 0th 1st ... 5th 6th | |
| dd | Su Mo ... Fr Sa | |
| ddd | Sun Mon ... Fri Sat | |
| dddd | Sunday Monday ... Friday Saturday | |
| AM/PM | A | AM PM |
| a | am pm | |
| Hour | H | 0 1 ... 22 23 |
| HH | 00 01 ... 22 23 | |
| h | 1 2 ... 11 12 | |
| hh | 01 02 ... 11 12 | |
| k | 1 2 ... 23 24 | |
| kk | 01 02 ... 23 24 | |
| Minute | m | 0 1 ... 58 59 |
| mm | 00 01 ... 58 59 | |
| Second | s | 0 1 ... 8 9 |
| ss | 00 01 ... 58 59 | |
| Fractional Second | S | 0 1 ... 8 9 |
| SS | 00 01 ... 98 99 | |
| SSS | 000 0001 ... 998 999 | |
| SSSS ... SSSSSSSSS | 000[0..] 001[0..] ... 998[0..] 999[0..] | |
| Time Zone | z or zz | EST CST ... MST PST |
| Z | -07:00 -06:00 ... +06:00 +07:00 | |
| ZZ | -0700 -0600 ... +0600 +0700 | |
| Unix Timestamp | X | 1360013296 |
| Unix Millisecond Timestamp | x | 1360013296123 |