Velocity compare 2 dates

Dominic Lagger

Hi all

I had a good solution to compare two dates in a confluence user macro.

I checked both dates with the millisecond timestamp.

#set( $modDateTimeMillis = $childVersion.getLastModificationDate().getTime() )
#if( $modDateTimeMillis > $startDate.timeInMillis)
#set( $dummy = $allVersions.add($childVersion) )
#end

But since the update to confluence 7.4 the "getTime()" function gives no return value.

How can I get the milliseconds from a date?

or even better:

Does anybody know, how I can compare two dates in a confluence user macro? The DateTool of Velocity dosen't seems to work in confluence.

Regards, Dominic

Dominic Lagger

The Developer community helped a lot! Also thank you @Diego for pointing to the developer community!

Here is the post and the answer: https://community.developer.atlassian.com/t/velocity-compare-2-dates/38614

My answer

Thanks a lot for all the support! 

First, I have to explain where the startDate comes from:

The startDate comes from a parameter in the user macro, which gives a german date in a string format.

#set( $startDate = $action.dateFormatter.getCalendar()) 
## Parse the parameter, which is a date in german format like "28.05.2020"
$startDate.set($year, $month, $day, 0, 0, 0) 

This gives me a calendar date. The Calendar API says, that the compareTo method needs Calendar parameter. But the “getLastModificationDate()” returns a Date, not a Calendar.

What I did:

I get the Date from the Calendar with:

$startDate.getTime() 
#Returns a `Date` object representing this `Calendar` 's time value (millisecond offset from the [Epoch](https://docs.oracle.com/javase/8/docs/api/java/util/Calendar.html?is-external=true#Epoch)"). 

Now I can compare the two Dates with

#if( $startDate.getTime().compareTo($childVersion.getLastModificationDate()) ) 

And that worked for me!

Regards, Dominic