Modify date from readtext

Eggplant Functional
1

I have a need to readtext from a field in a form that is a date and time field. The format is DDHHMMZMMMYYYY. I need to read this text and advance the date by 48 hours (or 2 days) and enter that into another field on the form in the same format (DDHHMMZMMMYYY). I am able to readtext the field and typetext that information into another field but have not been able to modify the date to 48 hours or 2 days later. Any assistance would be helpful.

2

What do these characters represent? Can you provide an example of an actual date? You have Ms in two places. I could guess at what one of these dates actually looks like, but what I’m guessing doesn’t really make sense to me. I can pretty much guarantee that eggPlant won’t read this as a date; you’ll have to split it up and reassemble it, then you’ll be able to add 48 hours to the result and then reformat that the way that you need to type it back.

3

The first and second characters represent the day of the month
The third and fourth characters represent the hour of the day (military time)
The fifth and sixth characters represent the minutes
Z is status and represents ZULU
The eighth, ninth, and tenth characters represent the month abbreviated
The final 4 characters represent the year
Example: 130844ZOCT2017 = 13 October 2017 at 0844 (8:44 am)

Thank you

4

Is anyone able to assist with this?

5

there you go


put Zulu_toDateTime("131324ZNOV2017") into mydate
put zuluDateTime(mydate + 2 days)

function Zulu_toDateTime (zulustring)	
	put characters 1 to 2 of zulustring  into day
	put characters 3 to 4 of zulustring  into hour	
	put characters 5 to 6 of zulustring  into min
	put character 7 of zulustring into Z
	put characters 8 to 10 of zulustring into month
	put characters 11 to 14 of zulustring into year

	return (month && day &"," && year && hour &":"& min)
end Zulu_toDateTime


function ZuluDateTime zdatetime	
	return formattedTime("%d%H%MZ%b%Y",zdatetime)	
end ZuluDateTime
6

Thank you for your reply. I have been working with the code provided but am not getting the proper results expected. First, I do not have the quoted value in the first line “131324ZNOV2017” to type into the script. This value is obtained from readtext of an image rectangle of another field. When I try to put that value in, I receive an error that the value is not a number. Any assistance is greatly appreciated.

7

ok, have you checked what the readtext is actually returning?
You might need to tinker with the readtext settings to read all the characters as expected and then trim off any leading and trailing spaces.

8

Hi, for future reference: you can simplify date calculations in a situation like this by expanding SenseTalk’s list of known date/time formats to include a new format. Just insert the new format into the timeInputFormat global property:

insert “%d%H%MZ%b%Y” into the timeInputFormat
Once that is done, SenseTalk can recognize strings in that format as date/time values, and the task becomes very simple:



set zuluTime to "310844ZOCT2017"





add 2 days to zuluTime


put zuluTime --> 020844ZNov2017