AsDate

Description

Converts a character sequence into a date value using the specified date format and returns the date value in a new column.

Use

• Argument:
  • Select an argument. (String)
• Format:
  • Enter the date format pattern or patterns separated by new line.
    • The top date format that can parse the date parses the date (input by input)
    • E.g., yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss
• Source time zone:
  • Select the source time zone. The source time zone is important to interpret the input dates when time zone information is absent.
    • E.g., 2020-12-03 12:22:52.284 can mean different points of time in UTC time, according to Europe/Berlin time zone or New York time zone
    • E.g., 2020-12-03 12:22:52.284+1:00 means only one point of time in UTC time.
• Locale:
  • Locale is important if you want to parse Month by names. It describes the input language.
• Fail on unparsable input (and nulls):
  • If marked, the Flow fails on an unparsable input.
  • If unmarked, AsDate produces null as output for unparsable input.
  • For null and empty input, AsDate always returns null (regardless the box is checked or unchecked)
• Output field name:
  • Enter a name for the output field.
    
    

Format

Format is a flexible way to describe how to parse the input strings. It gives the freedom to handle almost every input string. 

Sample formats

Craft your own format

Put the character blocks after each other, with separators.

Good to know:

• Lower and uppercase characters are different. Date formatting is case sensitive.
• Add:
  • exactly one character block for year, month, day, hour, minute.
  • one block for seconds, fractional seconds, and the time zone info.

am-pm-of-day
(input should be uppercase for almost every locale)

PM
AM

UTC
PST

The full documentation is at  https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/time/format/DateTimeFormatter.html 

Example

The input dates is:  6/15/2009 1:45 PM

Crafting the format:

• first is month, single digit form is allowed: M
• a slash: /
• the day is currently two digit long, it is better to use a single d because the month is not padded. It is expected the day will also not be padded.
• a slash: /
• year: yyyy
• a space: 
• hour is with am/pm mode and single digit is allowed, h
• a colon: :
• minutes: m
• a space:  
• an 'a' for reading AM/PM: a
• complete, no seconds or time zone in this example.

Let's put it together: M/d/yyyy h:m a

Type

AsDate