converting a number to a date.

birtnewbie

Hi,
I have a database table that has a numerical column. Now the problem is that the values it contains have actually been populated by a JAVA program that has put JAVA Date objects as long values inside this column.
I want to convert them back into a date that can be used for grouping in my report. Is there a BIRT function that can do this for me? can i do this using JavaScript?

Thanks in advance.

Virgil Dodson

Hi birtnewbie,

That's an interesting username you chose for yourself since I suspect over time you will progress from birtnewbie to birtintermediate and finally to birtguru.

In any case, I ran into a similar problem where the dates were being stored as EPOCH dates in our database. To get past this, I created a computed column on my data set. I called it 'realdate', set it as a Date format, and had the following expression.

var d = new Date()
var mEpoch = parseInt(row["origdate"]);
if(mEpoch<10000000000) mEpoch *= 1000;
d.setTime(mEpoch)
d;

I can then use this new computed field instead of the original field and perform proper grouping in tables and charts.

birtnewbie

Vdodson,
First of all, thank you for that warm welcome into the BIRT world, and birt-exchange. And thanks a ton for giving me that pointer. I suspected something like this would be used, but was not sure. Thank you for clarifying

looking forward to sharing knowledge (and gaining it) on birt-exchange.