Date and datetime offsets¶

Setting fixed date and datetime values as default¶

When you set a date or datetime field in AppGini, you can specify a default value for it. This default value can be a fixed date or datetime, or it can be a relative date or datetime. Relative dates and datetimes are calculated based on the current date and time when the record is saved.

Specifying a fixed date or datetime is straightforward. You simply enter the desired date or datetime in the field's default value property. For example, you can enter 2020-01-01 to set the default date to January 1, 2020, or 2020-01-01 12:00:00 to set the default datetime to January 1, 2020, 12:00 PM.

However, this is usually not very useful, as you'd typically want to set the default date or datetime to a value relative to the current date and time. For example, you might want to set the default fulfillment date of an order to 7 days from the current date, or you might want to set the default expiration date of a subscription to 30 days from the current date.

Relative date offsets¶

For date fields, you can specify a relative date offset in the Default property. The offset can be a postive or negative integer. Positive integers represent future dates, with 1 representing today, 2 representing tomorrow, and so on. Negative integers represent past dates, with -1 representing yesterday, -2 representing the day before yesterday, and so on.

For example, to set the default value of a date field to 7 days from the current date, you can enter 8 in the Default property. This is because 1 represents today, and 8 represents 7 days from today.

Relative datetime offsets¶

Note: This feature is available starting from AppGini 24.14

For datetime and timestamp fields, you can specify a relative datetime offset in the Default property. The offset can be a postive or negative integer, followed by one of the following characters:

s: seconds, e.g., +5s for 5 seconds from now, or -5s for 5 seconds ago.
m: minutes, e.g., +5m for 5 minutes from now, or -5m for 5 minutes ago.
h: hours, e.g., +5h for 5 hours from now, or -5h for 5 hours ago.
d: days, e.g., +5d for 5 days from now, or -5d for 5 days ago.

If you want to set the default value of a datetime field to now, you can enter +0s in the Default property.

Offset to an exact minute, hour, or day¶

If you want to set the default value of a datetime field to an exact minute (setting seconds to 00), hour (setting minutes and seconds to 00:00), or day (setting hours, minutes, and seconds to 00:00:00), just append a 0 to the offset.

For example, to set the default value of a datetime field to the next hour, you can enter +1h0 in the Default property. If the current time is 12:30:15, this will set the default value to 13:00:00.

Similarly, to set the default value of a datetime field to the next day at midnight, you can enter +1d0 in the Default property. If the current date and time is 2024-05-15 12:30:15, this will set the default value to 2024-05-16 00:00:00.

In the example screenshot below, we're setting the default value of the transaction date to +0m0, which means the current date and time to the minute (with seconds set to 00).