Choose where you’d like to start

toDate

Table of Contents

Overview

The toDate function takes an expression as an argument, and returns the expression (containing a date-time value) in the date format as specified in application settings. 

This function takes an optional argument dateTimeMapping when the given expression is of text data type. It is used to denote the date-time components for which the values in the text stand for.

Return Type

  • DATE-TIME

Syntax

<variable> = <expression>.toDate(<dateTimeMapping>);

(OR)

<variable> = toDate(<expression>, <dateTimeMapping>);

where,

ParameterData typeDescription
<variable>DATE-TIMEVariable which will contain the returned date value.
<expression>TEXT/NUMBER/DATE-TIME

The expression (containing a valid date time format) which will be returned in date format.

When the data type is NUMBER:

  • the number 1 stands for the date-time value 31-Dec-1969, and every increase in 1000 will add 1 second to the date value, and every decrease in 1000 will subtract 1 second from the date value. So, the number 1000 will return a date value of 31-Dec-1969.
  • the dateTimeMapping param is ignored.

When the data type is Date-Time, the additional parameters (mentioned below) are ignored. And, the function will throw a runtime error if the month value exceeds the number of months in a year, or the day value exceeds the number of days in a month.

<dateTimeMapping>

(optional)

DATE-TIME

The format in which the date-time value must be represented.

Applies when the given expression is of Text data type.

You can specify date-time literals (as mentioned in the below table) to denote the date value components in the expression as required. The pattern letters must be separated using the exact same separator as given in the expression.

When the month is specified as numerical value, the month pattern letter "M" must be specified as M or MM.

When the month is specified as a text value, the month pattern letter "M" must be specified as MMM (or may contain more number of M's).

Applicable Date Component Literals:

       Literal           Date and Time component
yYear
MMonth of the year
dDay of the month

Examples

 dateTimeString = "01,11,2019 1:30:00 pm"; 
 info toDate(dateTimeString, "MM,d,yyyy"); 
 // MM,d,yyyy is to denote the components in the expression
 // So the value for MM is 01 (January), the value for d is 11, and the value for yyyy is 2019
 // Assuming that the date time format set in application settings is dd-MMM-yyyy, the value returned is 11-Jan-2019

Get Started Now

Execute