DEV Community

Peter + AI
Peter + AI

Posted on

🚀 Unlocking Uniface: A Simple Guide to the `lineardatetime` Data Type

Hello, fellow developers! 👋 Today, we're diving into a niche but powerful feature in the Uniface development world: the lineardatetime data type. If you've ever found date and time calculations a bit tricky, this might be the solution you're looking for.

Just a heads-up: This post was drafted with the assistance of an AI to ensure clarity and provide helpful examples.

What Exactly is lineardatetime\? 🤔

In simple terms, lineardatetime is a special Uniface data type that stores both a date and a time as a single number. This number represents the total number of days from a starting point, where hours, minutes, and seconds are stored as fractions of a day.

Think of it like this:

  • 1.0 represents a full day.
  • 0.5 represents half a day (12 hours or noon).
  • 0.25 represents a quarter of a day (6 hours).

This approach makes performing calculations with dates and times incredibly straightforward, because you're just working with numbers!

How to Use It in ProcScript ⚙️

You can declare a lineardatetime variable just like any other data type in your variables block. Here's a simple example to show it in action.

Let's say we want to schedule an event that starts at noon and lasts for 3 hours. We can calculate the end time easily.

variables
  lineardatetime ldtEventStart, ldtEventEnd
  numeric vDurationHours
endvariables

; Set the duration to 3 hours
vDurationHours = 3

; Calculate the start time. Let's assume today is day '0' for this example.
; 0.5 represents half a day, which is 12:00 PM (noon).
ldtEventStart = 0.5

; Calculate the end time.
; We convert the duration in hours to a fraction of a day (3 / 24).
ldtEventEnd = ldtEventStart + (vDurationHours / 24)

; The result of ldtEventEnd will be 0.5 + 0.125 = 0.625
; This represents 3:00 PM.
message "Event ends at linear datetime: %%ldtEventEnd"
Enter fullscreen mode Exit fullscreen mode

Why is This Useful? ✨

The main advantage of lineardatetime is the simplicity it brings to date and time arithmetic.

  • Easy Calculations: Adding or subtracting time intervals is just a matter of simple addition or subtraction. No need to worry about complex date functions for basic offsets.
  • Simplified Storage: It represents a specific point in time as a single floating-point number, which can be efficient for storage and indexing in some scenarios.
  • Great for Durations: It's perfect for calculating durations or finding a future/past point in time by adding or subtracting a fractional day value.

And that's it! A quick and simple introduction to the lineardatetime data type in Uniface. It's a small feature, but it can make your code cleaner and your life easier when dealing with date and time math.

Happy coding! 💻

Top comments (0)