Dynamics AX – All about dates and X++

By Sourabh Khosla | June 17, 2014

Well, we have all been there... you are working with dates in Dynamics AX and you realize there are tons of functions out there for dates... which one to pick?  And actually almost all the time I cannot find what I need.

So, I am just going to write out everything I can recall about date functions at this point and we will go from there.

  • I will start with the Current Business Date.
    Generally, I have used systemDateGet() which holds the logic business date of the system. There is one more function called today() which gives the actual machine date. So far I haven't felt the need to use today() but if anyone needs, it is out there.
    systemDateGet()
    today()There is one global method called getSystemDateTime(); which sets the current UTC time as a utcdatetime type. Only DateTimeUtil::getSystemDateTimecompensates for the time zone of the user, so as a best practice we should use this one instead of systemDateGet()
  • There are functions out there which will allow you to get Day of Month, Month of Year, and so on.
    dayOfMth(systemdateget());
    dayOfYr(systemdateget());
    wkOfYr(systemdateget());
    mthOfYr(systemdateget());
    dayName(dayOfMth(systemdateget()));
  • When we need to get the next month, next year or may be next quarter, We have:
    nextMth(systemdateget());
    prevMth(systemdateget());
    nextYr(systemdateget());
    preYr(systemdateget());
    prevQtr(systemdateget());
    nextQtr(systemdateget());
    dateMthFwd(systemdateget(), 9);  // forward 9 months
    dateMthFwd(systemdateget(), -9);  // backward 9 Months
  • Creating your own date
    mkdate : Creates a date based on three integers, which indicate the day, month, and year, respectively.
    e.g. mkDate(09, 09, 1989);
  • Date to String conversion
    date2str(systemdateget(), 123, dateDay::Digits2, DateSeparator::Space, DateMonth::Digits2, DateSeparator::Space, DateYear::Digits4);There is one more method available in case we want to use the regional settings of the user.
    date2strUsr(systemdateget());
  • UTCDateTime conversion
    Just so that you know, values of type UTCDateTime are stored in the database in UTC time zone while in the User Interface UTCDateTime values are displayed in  a user preferred time zone.  And the regular Date and Time values are not related to any time zone, so both stored and displayed values are equal.

public static void utcDateTimeConversion()
{
utcDateTime dateTimeUTC;
date regularDate;
TimeOfDay regularTime;

dateTimeUTC = DateTimeUtil::utcNow();

// converting UTC date/time to regular user time zone date
regularDate= DateTimeUtil::date(DateTimeUtil::applyTimeZoneOffset(dateTimeUTC ,
DateTimeUtil::getUserPreferredTimeZone()));

// converting UTC date/time to regular user time zone time
regularTime= DateTimeUtil::time(DateTimeUtil::applyTimeZoneOffset(dateTimeUTC,
DateTimeUtil::getUserPreferredTimeZone()));

// converting date/time from user time zone to utc date/time
dateTimeUTC = DateTimeUtil::newDateTime(regularDate, regularTime,
DateTimeUtil::getUserPreferredTimeZone());
}

For more on working with dates in Dynamics AX check out these blog posts: Working With UTC Date Time Functionality and Working With UTC Date Time Fields in Select Statements.


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