Delivered methods to add / subtract time to current timestamp with Time Zone?

Is anyone aware of any delivered functions or methods to add / subtract time from the current time with the time zone applied?

For example, lets say you want to filter for data created in the last hour and need to derive the current time minus 1 hour. The delivered "timestamp" object does let you set the set the time zone and format of the current time, but doesn't appear to provide any methods for adding / subtracting time and returns a string.

Additionally, the native java classes that "timestamp" object leverages are blocked / blacklisted by Infor (e.g. java.util.Calendar and java.text.SimpleDateFormat) so you can't easily implement adding / subtracting time methods on your own.

What I usually end up doing is writing JS functions to derive the time zone offset based on whether it's currently daylight savings time, modify the hours on a date object with the offest, and then us a regex to format the ISO string to the desired format. This works fine, but I'd rather have a simpler delivered solution that doesn't require function declarations; or better yet have them whitelist java.util.Calendar and java.text.SimpleDateFormat.

I'm curious about input from others before I enter an enhancement request.

Thanks!
Andy

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Rebecca Derr

I ran into the same issues you noted Andy and would certainly vote for an enhancement. I'd like to be able to return the datetime (from the server's utc datetime) based on a timezone parameter.

russel-cornelson

@RDerr
The system is already capable of doing this. You can use ctrl-space to access the timestamp function from the variable list.
-- what it can't do is date math on the value

andy

Thanks Russ, yes what I'm looking for is date math on the current timestamp. It looks like most dates are stored in UTC, so it's not always relevant, but would still be nice to have.

Joshua Kempf

I would vote for an enhancement. It would be nice to have some better date handling methods. Below is how I currently get look back dates for filters and convert system timestamps to local times for end-users' emails and it always feels clunky.

russel-cornelson

I think I may already have an internal enhancement for this; I will look when i get a few free minutes and let you know.

Rebecca Derr

Russ, I am aware of the function you mentioned, but it did not work for my specific use case as it only modifies the current time. What I need is to input a UTC timestamp and retrieve it in the preferred timezone.

Unfortunately, I was unable to achieve this without custom work that required knowledge of the offset for daylight savings. It has been several months since I last worked on this. If you need further clarification, I can provide an example. Just let me know.

[edit] sorry I wasn't clear in my original post - what I'm looking for is something like getFormattedTimeZoneTimeStamp(format,timezone,timestamp)

where timestamp would be any UTC timestamp retrieved from a process?

Joshua Kempf

RDerr, in case it's helpful and/or different than what you tried before, I show how I do convert timezones in the screenshots in my top-level reply to Andy's post. I get the time in UTC and my target time zone (US/Pacific) and then subtract the two to get the current offset (-7 or -8), which I can then add to system timestamps later to get local times for our users. Just to reiterate, it is clunky and would be nice to have better date, time, and timezone handling methods.

russel-cornelson

I am going to internally log an enhancement request ... can we collect use cases here with an example of what you all want like RDerr did.

getFormattedTimeZoneTimeStamp(format,timezone,timestamp)
addTime(format,timezone,timestamp,addInteger,scale) where scale = minutes/hours/days/years?
subtractTime(format,timezone,timestamp,addInteger,scale) where scale = minutes/hours/days/years?

Rebecca Derr

I think an unformatted function would be helpful as well:
getTimeZoneTimeStamp(timezone,timestamp)

andy

--> Scheduled flow that needs to derive a date filter for time elapsed since the previous run using date fields that are stored with the time zone applied.

--> Scheduled flow that needs to derive a date filter for time elapsed since the previous run using date fields that are stored without the time zone applied, so time zone not needed in filtering data, but derived date values need time zone to be applied in fields displayed in email notifications or filenames.

In general, whitelisting the java.util.Calendar, java.util.TimeZone, and java.text.SimpleDateFormat classes would be preferable because it would provide more flexibility of date manipulation and formatting in future use cases, but I understand that likely won't be allowed

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