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:
Created in 2020 by Google Inc.