diff-date.md

Diff Date

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 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

would result in this record:

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