Diff Date directive

The DIFF-DATE directive calculates the difference between two dates.

Syntax

diff-date :column1 :column2 :destination

Usage Notes

The DIFF-DATE directive calculates the difference between two Date objects (<column1> minus <column2>) and puts the difference (in milliseconds) into the destination column.

This directive can only be applied on two columns whose date strings have already been parsed, either using the PARSE-AS-DATE or PARSE-AS-SIMPLE-DATE directives.

A negative difference can be returned when the first column is an earlier date than the second column.

If you use PARSE-AS-DATE and one of the dates in the column is null, the resulting column will be null. If any of the columns contains the string now, then the current date-time will be substituted for it. When now is encountered, the directive applies the same value for now across all rows.

Example

Using this record as an example:

{
  "create_date": "02/12/2017",
  "update_date": "02/14/2017"
}

Applying this directive:

diff-date :update_date :create_date :diff_date

results in this record:

{
  "create_date": "02/12/2017",
  "update_date": "02/14/2017",
  "diff_date": 17280000
}