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Date / Time Datatypes

Datetime Datatype

JSON doesn’t have a date, datetime, or time datatype, so dates in Xapiand can either be:

• Strings containing formatted dates, e.g. "2001-05-24T10:41:25.123Z", "2001-05-24", "2001/05/24 10:41:25.123" or ISO-8601.
• A floating point number representing seconds-since-the-epoch.
• An object containing a _datetime or _date type.

Internally, dates are converted to UTC (if the time-zone is specified) and stored as a floating point number representing seconds-since-the-epoch.

Queries on dates are internally converted to range queries on this representation, and the result of aggregations and stored fields is converted back to a string depending on the date format that is associated with the field.

UPDATE /bank/1
{
  "birthday": "2001-05-24T10:41:25.123Z"
}

UPDATE /bank/1
{
  "birthday": {
    "_datetime": {
      "_year": 2001,
      "_month": 5,
      "_day": 24,
      "_hour": 10,
      "_min": 41,
      "_sec": 25,
      "_fsec": 0.123
    }
  }
}

Optimized Range Searches

Data types like date and numeric are often used for range search. Due to the way range searches are implemented, searchig for values is not as performant as seaching by terms. To improve the performance of the search, Xapiand uses the _accuracy keyword, which indexes terms for value thresholds which later are used during the querying to improve the filtering and searching.

In the above example terms for the day, month and year are generated.

Default accuracy in datetime fields is:

[ "hour", "day", "month", "year", "decade", "century" ]

Date Math Expressions

The Date Datatype supports using date math expressions when using it in a query/filter or during indexation. Whenever durations need to be specified, e.g. for a timeout parameter, the duration can be specified.

The expression starts with an “anchor” date, which can be either now or a date string (in the applicable format) ending with ||. This anchor date can optionally be followed by one or more maths expressions:

• +1h - add one hour
• -1d - subtract one day
• /d - round down to the nearest day

The supported units are:

y	Years
M	Months
w	Weeks
d	Days
h	Hours
m	Minutes
s	Seconds

Example

UPDATE /bank/2
{
    "birthday": {
      "_value": "2019-01-01||-18y+4M+23d",
      "_type": "datetime"
    }
}

The above example is indexed as “2001-05-24”.

Parameters

The following parameters are accepted by Date fields:

_accuracy	Array with the accuracies to be indexed: "second", "minute", "day", "hour", "month", "year", "decade", "century", "millennium"
_value	The value for the field. (Only used at index time).
_index	The mode the field will be indexed as: "none", "field_terms", "field_values", "field_all", "field", "global_terms", "global_values", "global_all", "global", "terms", "values", "all". (The default is "field_all").
_slot	The slot number. (It’s calculated by default).
_prefix	The prefix the term is going to be indexed with. (It’s calculated by default)
_weight	The weight the term is going to be indexed with.

Time Datatype

The time can also be a type without the entire date:

For example:

UPDATE /bank/1
{
  "wakeupTime": {
    "_value": "10:12:12.123",
    "_type": "time"
  }
}

Time Delta Datatype

For example:

UPDATE /bank/1
{
  "delay": {
    "_type": "timedelta",
    "_value": "+10:12:12.123"
  }
}

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