Google Script- Convert Date to Epoch Time - google-apps-script

I've been working on this for a long time and haven't quite found anything that fits what I need.
Right now, I have an array of dates- all of them look like this -
Sun Mar 31 2013 00:00:00 GMT+0700 (ICT).
I'm looking for a way to convert that into
1364688000
Only through Google Script.
How would you go about doing this?

=(A3-DATE(1970,1,1))*86400
With A3 being something like "2/20/2018"

The getTime() method applied to a date returns the number of milliseconds since the epoch reference in JavaScript, ie what you are looking for.
Logger.log(new Date(2013,3,31,0,0,0,0).getTime());
Your value is in seconds, so we can divide /1000
but the value you are showing is not correct, result has an offset of 31 days in GMT 0 ... How are you getting the value 1364688000 ?
test code (script properties in UTC (GMT 0 without daylight savings)
function timeInMsSinceOrigin(){
var val = new Date(2013,3,31,0,0,0,0).getTime()/1000;// in seconds
var offset = val-1364688000; //in seconds too
Logger.log('value = '+val+ ' offset : '+offset/3600+' hours ='+offset/(3600*24)+' days');
}
Logger result : value = 1367366400 offset : 744 hours =31 days

Related

Google Script Forcing Date Format [duplicate]

I'm trying to get from a time formatted Cell (hh:mm:ss) the hour value, the values can be bigger 24:00:00 for example 20000:00:00 should give 20000:
Table:
if your read the Value of E1:
var total = sheet.getRange("E1").getValue();
Logger.log(total);
The result is:
Sat Apr 12 07:09:21 GMT+00:09 1902
Now I've tried to convert it to a Date object and get the Unix time stamp of it:
var date = new Date(total);
var milsec = date.getTime();
Logger.log(Utilities.formatString("%11.6f",milsec));
var hours = milsec / 1000 / 60 / 60;
Logger.log(hours)
1374127872020.000000
381702.1866722222
The question is how to get the correct value of 20000 ?
Expanding on what Serge did, I wrote some functions that should be a bit easier to read and take into account timezone differences between the spreadsheet and the script.
function getValueAsSeconds(range) {
var value = range.getValue();
// Get the date value in the spreadsheet's timezone.
var spreadsheetTimezone = range.getSheet().getParent().getSpreadsheetTimeZone();
var dateString = Utilities.formatDate(value, spreadsheetTimezone,
'EEE, d MMM yyyy HH:mm:ss');
var date = new Date(dateString);
// Initialize the date of the epoch.
var epoch = new Date('Dec 30, 1899 00:00:00');
// Calculate the number of milliseconds between the epoch and the value.
var diff = date.getTime() - epoch.getTime();
// Convert the milliseconds to seconds and return.
return Math.round(diff / 1000);
}
function getValueAsMinutes(range) {
return getValueAsSeconds(range) / 60;
}
function getValueAsHours(range) {
return getValueAsMinutes(range) / 60;
}
You can use these functions like so:
var range = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet().getRange('A1');
Logger.log(getValueAsHours(range));
Needless to say, this is a lot of work to get the number of hours from a range. Please star Issue 402 which is a feature request to have the ability to get the literal string value from a cell.
There are two new functions getDisplayValue() and getDisplayValues() that returns the datetime or anything exactly the way it looks to you on a Spreadsheet. Check out the documentation here
The value you see (Sat Apr 12 07:09:21 GMT+00:09 1902) is the equivalent date in Javascript standard time that is 20000 hours later than ref date.
you should simply remove the spreadsheet reference value from your result to get what you want.
This code does the trick :
function getHours(){
var sh = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
var cellValue = sh.getRange('E1').getValue();
var eqDate = new Date(cellValue);// this is the date object corresponding to your cell value in JS standard
Logger.log('Cell Date in JS format '+eqDate)
Logger.log('ref date in JS '+new Date(0,0,0,0,0,0));
var testOnZero = eqDate.getTime();Logger.log('Use this with a cell value = 0 to check the value to use in the next line of code '+testOnZero);
var hours = (eqDate.getTime()+ 2.2091616E12 )/3600000 ; // getTime retrieves the value in milliseconds, 2.2091616E12 is the difference between javascript ref and spreadsheet ref.
Logger.log('Value in hours with offset correction : '+hours); // show result in hours (obtained by dividing by 3600000)
}
note : this code gets only hours , if your going to have minutes and/or seconds then it should be developped to handle that too... let us know if you need it.
EDIT : a word of explanation...
Spreadsheets use a reference date of 12/30/1899 while Javascript is using 01/01/1970, that means there is a difference of 25568 days between both references. All this assuming we use the same time zone in both systems. When we convert a date value in a spreadsheet to a javascript date object the GAS engine automatically adds the difference to keep consistency between dates.
In this case we don't want to know the real date of something but rather an absolute hours value, ie a "duration", so we need to remove the 25568 day offset. This is done using the getTime() method that returns milliseconds counted from the JS reference date, the only thing we have to know is the value in milliseconds of the spreadsheet reference date and substract this value from the actual date object. Then a bit of maths to get hours instead of milliseconds and we're done.
I know this seems a bit complicated and I'm not sure my attempt to explain will really clarify the question but it's always worth trying isn't it ?
Anyway the result is what we needed as long as (as stated in the comments) one adjust the offset value according to the time zone settings of the spreadsheet. It would of course be possible to let the script handle that automatically but it would have make the script more complex, not sure it's really necessary.
For simple spreadsheets you may be able to change your spreadsheet timezone to GMT without daylight saving and use this short conversion function:
function durationToSeconds(value) {
var timezoneName = SpreadsheetApp.getActive().getSpreadsheetTimeZone();
if (timezoneName != "Etc/GMT") {
throw new Error("Timezone must be GMT to handle time durations, found " + timezoneName);
}
return (Number(value) + 2209161600000) / 1000;
}
Eric Koleda's answer is in many ways more general. I wrote this while trying to understand how it handles the corner cases with the spreadsheet timezone, browser timezone and the timezone changes in 1900 in Alaska and Stockholm.
Make a cell somewhere with a duration value of "00:00:00". This cell will be used as a reference. Could be a hidden cell, or a cell in a different sheet with config values. E.g. as below:
then write a function with two parameters - 1) value you want to process, and 2) reference value of "00:00:00". E.g.:
function gethours(val, ref) {
let dv = new Date(val)
let dr = new Date(ref)
return (dv.getTime() - dr.getTime())/(1000*60*60)
}
Since whatever Sheets are doing with the Duration type is exactly the same for both, we can now convert them to Dates and subtract, which gives correct value. In the code example above I used .getTime() which gives number of milliseconds since Jan 1, 1970, ... .
If we tried to compute what is exactly happening to the value, and make corrections, code gets too complicated.
One caveat: if the number of hours is very large say 200,000:00:00 there is substantial fractional value showing up since days/years are not exactly 24hrs/365days (? speculating here). Specifically, 200000:00:00 gives 200,000.16 as a result.

How to get google sheet's cell values as is using google script

I'm about to use google sheet as my database for my android app small project. I'm using Google Script to handle the request from my app.
In my google sheet, I store;
A2:A = date as dd/mm/yyyy e.g 21/12/2019 but
the display format is dd-MMM e.g 21-Dec
C2:D = time as hh:mm:ss e.g 21:00:00 but
the display format is hh:mm e.g 21:00
Yes, I need a different format for the display and input.
My google sheet:
When I use google script to get a value of the cell, it seems that it is reformatted
the date looks like this: Sat Jan 01 2019 00:00:00 GMT+0700 (ICT)
the time the other hand, change in value a bit. 20:00:00 to 19:52:48
Is there any function to get cell real values as text without being reformatted?
The only thing that I can think of is instead of using getValues(), I can use getDisplayValues(). The values will not be reformatted, but it is not a solution for me, as it will take the display format.
Snippet of my code:
function updateData(e, sheet) {
var tgl = e.parameter.tgl;
var dtg = e.parameter.dtg;
var plg = e.parameter.plg;
var lbr = e.parameter.lbr;
var rangeHead = sheet.getRange("A2:A");
var valuesHead = rangeHead.getValues();
var rangeFirst = sheet.getRange("C2:D")
var valuesFirst = rangeFirst.getValues();
var rangeSecond = sheet.getRange("G2:G")
var valuesSecond = rangeSecond.getValues();
for (var i = 0; i < valuesHead.length; i++) {
if (valuesHead[i][0] === tgl) {
if(dtg!="null") { valuesFirst[i][0] = dtg; }
if(plg!="null") { valuesFirst[i][1] = plg; }
if(lbr!="null") { valuesSecond[i][0] = lbr; }
break;
}
}
rangeFirst.setValues(valuesFirst);
rangeSecond.setValues(valuesSecond);
}
The code won't work as I will comparing 21/12/2019 with Sat Jan 01 2019 00:00:00 GMT+0700 (GMT).
[UPDATE 1]:
Thank you P-Burke for the enlightenment. Now, I have an idea to solve the date problem. I know that the script pulls the date as date object, but I am unaware that it also saves as a date object. (hehe my bad) I don't realize it as there is no autocomplete when I call values[0][0]. of course, as it recognizes the object type at the run time.
So, my workaround will be; I will call getDate, getMonth+1, and getYear. After that, I will compare with my parameter freely.
Though, the time cell still a bit confusing for me. the time offset is 18 minutes 12 seconds. I don't think it's because of timezone different and my computer clock. the timezone different is too big and I 've made sure that the script, spreadsheet, and local timezone all the same. My computer clock is also only a minute less behind.
[UPDATE 2]:
Alright, enough with the confusion. It seemed that the script converts the time to Date object respect to my local timezone. I got this answer from another thread. So, actually, my local timezone changes many times and some of them have offset smaller than hours unit (one of the timezones used in my area is UTC +7:07:12h). The only source documenting those changes I could find is from https://www.timeanddate.com/time/zone/indonesia/jakarta. Finally, I gave up. For my goodness sake, I will just use getDisplayValue and ignore the seconds. Unless you guys have any other workaround, I will be so grateful.
Thank you once again to the community.
Firstly, and I don't know if this is related to your issue, but the spreadsheet and the script each have their own timezone setting:
Spreadsheet: File >> Spreadsheet Settings >> Time Zone.
Script: File >> Project Properties >> Time Zone.
And if these are different that can lead to confusion. One answer, if all your users are in the same timezone, is to set them to the same. Alternatively these can be determined from within your script as described here, and logic included to handle any differences. I don't understand the few minutes time difference, perhaps your PC clock is inaccurate?
The other point, which I think is more relevant to your question is that you effectively have multiple date/time formats in play. The picture below shows that in the spreadsheet times are edited in one format (02/01/2019 09:00:00), but displayed in whatever format is defined for the cell using the format menu. Yet when the cell values are pulled into a script using getValues() and displayed they appear as follows: Values: [[Thu Jan 31 09:00:00 GMT+00:00 2019, Wed Jan 02 09:00:00 GMT+00:00 2019]].
Yet in the code below, values[0][0] and values[0][1] are actually JavaScript Date() objects and can be compared in the usual way, alternatively they can be reformatted into whatever string format you require as illustrated in the code below:
function myFunction() {
var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
var ws = ss.getActiveSheet();
var input_range = ws.getRange("A1:B1");
var values = [];
values = input_range.getValues(); // Returns a multi-dimensional array, hence [0][0] to access.
Logger.log("Values: %s", values);
// As Date() objects the usual methods are available.
Logger.log("Date().getMonth(): %s",values[0][0].getMonth());
Logger.log("Date().getYear(): %s",values[0][1].getYear());
// This formats the date as Greenwich Mean Time in the format
// year-month-dateThour-minute-second.
var formattedDate = Utilities.formatDate(values[0][0], "GMT", "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'");
Logger.log(formattedDate);
formattedDate = Utilities.formatDate(values[0][1], "GMT", "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss'Z'");
Logger.log(formattedDate);
}
Logger.log output:
[19-01-31 11:43:17:635 GMT] Values: [[Thu Jan 31 09:00:00 GMT+00:00 2019, Wed Jan 02 09:00:00 GMT+00:00 2019]]
[19-01-31 11:43:17:636 GMT] Date().getMonth(): 0.0
[19-01-31 11:43:17:637 GMT] Date().getYear(): 2019.0
[19-01-31 11:43:17:638 GMT] 2019-01-31T09:00:00Z
[19-01-31 11:43:17:638 GMT] 2019-01-02T09:00:00Z

Utilities.formatDate Date not set correct

I have a date stored as follows:
existingDate = Wed Apr 30 2014 00:00:00 GMT+0100 (BST)
When I use Utilities.formatDate to format the date the date is changed to the day before.
var formattedDate = Utilities.formatDate(new Date(existingDate), "GMT", "dd/MM/yyyy");
the formatted date is then set to 29/04/2014 and not 30/04/2014.
Has anyone else seen this behavior.
Utilities.formatDate seems to be working fine.
You have Apr 30 midnight in GMT-1 but then you tell it to format this date in a different timezone GMT, or more explicity GMT-0. The expected result is indeed Apr 29 23h.
The second parameter in Utilities.formatDate must be the timezone you desire.
There are some other issues with this google script.
If I want the timezone AEST but only have the date in the form of 1/27/2017, then Utilities.formatDate("1/27/2017","AEST","yyyy-MM-dd") will return a value of 2017-01-26, a day before it should be! However if I have a time with it such as "1/27/2017 12:00:00" then it returns the correct day. However if I use "GMT+11" as the timezone even without a time on the end if returns the correct day.
Example -
Logger.log('Example 1='+Utilities.formatDate(new Date("1/27/2017"),"AEST","yyyy-MM-dd"));
Logger.log('Example 2='+Utilities.formatDate(new Date("1/27/2017 12:00:00"),"AEST","yyyy-MM-dd"));
Logger.log('Example 3='+Utilities.formatDate(new Date("1/27/2017"),"GMT+11","yyyy-MM-dd"));
Output -
Example 1=2017-01-26
Example 2=2017-01-27
Example 3=2017-01-27
A workaround when reading a date from a spreadsheet cell that does not have a time is to add a time and when using a timezone like "AEST" or similar, something like this -
var displayDate = sheet.getRange(a1Notation).getDisplayValue(); // Not .getValue();
Logger.log(Utilities.formatDate(new Date(displayDate + " 12:00:00"), "AEST", "yyyy-MM-dd"));
However "GMT+11" would be easier because you don't need to add a time.

Trying to subtract 5 days from a defined date - Google App Script

I'm trying to write a script which is supposed to send out an email and create two calender entries when submitting a form. To be honest, this is my first script and I am very happy that the email is send out and the calender entries are working as well. The thing which gives me a headache is to subtract 5 days (actually x days) from a defined date.
First I thought I could simply do something like
var liveday = e.values[2];
var newday = liveday-5;
well, this didn't work :-)
I tried more:
var newtime = new Date(liveday);
var yr = newtime.getYear();
var dt = newtime.getDay();
var mt = newtime.getMonth();
var dtnew = dtnew.setDate(mt, dt-5, yr);
But here I received 1418256000000 whereas liveday = 12/01/2014. Not sure why days were added, rather than subtracted.
I am quite confused here and the answer can't be that hard.
I just want to subtract 5 days from 12/01/2014 to receive 11/27/2014.
Thanks for having a look
the comment sends you to a rather complicated serie of codes... there is a far more simple way to get that, here is the code :
function test() {
Logger.log('today= '+new Date()+' and 5 days ago is '+subDaysFromDate(new Date(),5));
}
function subDaysFromDate(date,d){
// d = number of day ro substract and date = start date
var result = new Date(date.getTime()-d*(24*3600*1000));
return result
}
Logger result :
[13-11-18 23:39:50:364 CET] today= Mon Nov 18 2013 23:39:50 GMT+0100 (CET) and 5 days ago is Wed Nov 13 2013 23:39:50 GMT+0100 (CET)
if you want to get the date in the form dd/mm/yyyy use Utilities.formatDate(date, timeZone, 'dd/MM/yyyy), see doc here

Calculating runtime minus Timestamp

I have a form which activates a procedure via an "On form submit" trigger. At the end of this routine I want to insert the difference in time between the form's Timestamp and the current time at the end of the routine (the difference of which is only a matter of a few seconds).
I've tried many things so far, but the result I typically receive is NaN.
I thought that my best bet would be to construct the runtime elements (H,M,S) and similarly deconstruct the time elements from the entire Timestamp, and then perform a bit of math on that:
var rt_ts = Math.abs(run_time - ts_time);
(btw, I got that formula from somewhere on this site, but I'm obviously grasping at anything at this point. I just can't seem to find a thread where my particular issue is addressed)
I've always found that dealing with dates and time in Javascript is tricky business (ex: the quirk that "month" start at zero while "date" starts at 1. That's unnecessarily mind-bending).
Would anyone care to lead me out of my current "grasping" mindset and guide me towards something resembling a logical approach?
You can simply add this at the top of your onFormSubmit routine :
UserProperties.setProperty('start',new Date().getTime().toString())
and this at the end that will show you the duration in millisecs.
var duration = new Date().getTime()-Number(UserProperties.getProperty('start'))
EDIT following your comment :
the time stamp coming from an onFormSubmit event is the first element of the array returned by e.values see docs here
so I don't really understand what problem you have ??
something like this below should work
var duration = new Date().getTime() - new Date(e.values[0]).getTime();//in millisecs
the value being a string I pass it it 'new Date' to make it a date object again. You can easily check that using the logger like this :
Logger.log(new Date(e.values[0]));//
It will return a complete date value in the form Fri Mar 12 15:00:00 GMT+01:00 2013
But the values will most probably be the same as in my first suggestion since the TimeStamp is the moment when the function is triggered...
I have a function which can show the times in a ss with timestamps in column A. It will also add the time of the script itself to the first timestamp (in row 3) and show this in the Log.
Notice that the google spreadsheet timestamp has a resolution in seconds and the script timestamp in milliseconds. So if you only add, say, 300 milliseconds to a spreadsheet timestamp, it might not show any difference at all if posted back to a spreadsheet. The script below only takes about 40 milliseconds to run, so I have added a Utilities.sleep(0) where you can change the value 0 to above 1000 to show a difference.
function testTime(){
var start = new Date().getTime();
var values = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSheet().getDataRange().getValues();
for(var i = 2; i < values.length ; i++){
Logger.log(Utilities.formatDate(new Date(values[i][0]),Session.getTimeZone(),'d MMM yy hh:mm:ss' )); // this shows the date, in my case same as the ss timestamp.
Logger.log( new Date(values[i][0]).getTime() ); // this is the date in Milliseconds after 1 Jan 1970
}
Utilities.sleep(0); //you can vary this to see the effects
var endTime = new Date();
var msCumulative = (endTime.getTime() - start);
Logger.log(msCumulative);
var msTot = (msCumulative + new Date(values[2][0]).getTime());
Logger.log('script length in milliseconds ' + msTot );
var finalTime = Utilities.formatDate(new Date(msTot), Session.getTimeZone(), 'dd/MM/yyyy hh:mm:ss');
Logger.log ( finalTime); //Note that unless you change above to Utilities.sleep(1000) or greater number , this logged date/time is going to be identical to the first timestamp since the script runs so quickly, less than 1 second.
}