Hi Ashis,
Yes you are absolutely correct on the point that the values which got converted are in UTC format because of which you are facing this issue. Also, one thing to note is in VB .NET you only have the DateTime class. Technically speaking, even the Date values are treated as DateTime objects with time component values as 00:00:00 only which is why when we call the data type in VB .NET then it is by default mapped against the DateTime column in the collection.
My fair guess here is that Blue Prism internally has some mechanism of converting the DateTime objects into the the 'Date' data type at the Blue Prism end or they might be using some specific class for dates that I am not aware of yet.
Perhaps @Bruce Liu @ewilson or someone from the technical team can confirm which class type in VB .NET is specifically being used to map the data type 'Date' in Blue Prism.
Coming to one of the solution is probably something you have picked up correctly that we would require to convert the incoming date from UTC format. For implementing this I have modified by solution a bit as shown below:
First you need to create all this extra data items as input parameters for the action where you can supply the time difference in terms of hours, minutes and seconds. You can provide the default value as 0 (Initial Value). So tomorrow in case you want to work with UTC format simply no need to provide any values.
In the code stage also the following changes need to be done:
Here the major change is the commenting of the line:
Here I am converting UTC to IST so I have provided the time difference of +5:30, you can also provide negative values if your target time zone is behind the UTC time zone
You can see we got the proper datetime values now since we are considering them to be a part of our current Time Zone. Hope it helps you out!
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Hope it helps you and if it resolves you query please mark it as the best answer so that others having the same problem can track the answer easily
Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Automation Consultant
Blueprism 6x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com
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Yes you are absolutely correct on the point that the values which got converted are in UTC format because of which you are facing this issue. Also, one thing to note is in VB .NET you only have the DateTime class. Technically speaking, even the Date values are treated as DateTime objects with time component values as 00:00:00 only which is why when we call the data type in VB .NET then it is by default mapped against the DateTime column in the collection.
My fair guess here is that Blue Prism internally has some mechanism of converting the DateTime objects into the the 'Date' data type at the Blue Prism end or they might be using some specific class for dates that I am not aware of yet.
Perhaps @Bruce Liu @ewilson or someone from the technical team can confirm which class type in VB .NET is specifically being used to map the data type 'Date' in Blue Prism.
Coming to one of the solution is probably something you have picked up correctly that we would require to convert the incoming date from UTC format. For implementing this I have modified by solution a bit as shown below:
First you need to create all this extra data items as input parameters for the action where you can supply the time difference in terms of hours, minutes and seconds. You can provide the default value as 0 (Initial Value). So tomorrow in case you want to work with UTC format simply no need to provide any values.
In the code stage also the following changes need to be done:
Here the major change is the commenting of the line:
Output_Collection.ImportRow(row) and instead we are using a different looping logic altogether so that we can check the date data type and accordingly convert just that one column value to Local format instead of importing all the rows at once.For Each column As System.Data.DataColumn In Input_Collection.Columns If Field_Name.Equals(column.ColumnName) Then If CStr(Field_Type).ToUpper.Equals("TEXT") Then Output_Collection.Columns.Add(column.ColumnName,GetType(String)) ElseIf CStr(Field_Type).ToUpper.Equals("NUMBER") Then Output_Collection.Columns.Add(column.ColumnName,GetType(Integer)) ElseIf CStr(Field_Type).ToUpper.Equals("FLAG") Then Output_Collection.Columns.Add(column.ColumnName,GetType(Boolean)) ElseIf CStr(Field_Type).ToUpper.Equals("DATE") Then Output_Collection.Columns.Add(column.ColumnName,GetType(Date)) Else Throw New Exception("Invalid File Type Provided") End If Else Output_Collection.Columns.Add(column.ColumnName,column.DataType)
End If
NextDim newRow As System.Data.DataRow
For Each row as System.Data.DataRow In Input_Collection.Rows
newRow = Output_Collection.NewRow() For Each column as System.Data.DataColumn In Output_Collection.Columns If column.DataType = GetType(Date) Then newRow(column.ColumnName) = CDate(row(column.ColumnName)) + New TimeSpan(0,Time_Difference_In_Hours,Time_Difference_In_Minutes,Time_Difference_In_Seconds) Else newRow(column.ColumnName) = row(column.ColumnName) End If Next Output_Collection.Rows.Add(newRow)Next
Test Results:Here I am converting UTC to IST so I have provided the time difference of +5:30, you can also provide negative values if your target time zone is behind the UTC time zone
You can see we got the proper datetime values now since we are considering them to be a part of our current Time Zone. Hope it helps you out!
------------------------------
----------------------------------
Hope it helps you and if it resolves you query please mark it as the best answer so that others having the same problem can track the answer easily
Regards,
Devneet Mohanty
Intelligent Automation Consultant
Blueprism 6x Certified Professional
Website: https://devneet.github.io/
Email: devneetmohanty07@gmail.com
----------------------------------
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There's nothing super special going on behind the scenes within Blue Prism. As you can see from a Code stage, Blue Prism's Date, DateTime, and Time data items are all implemented using System.DateTime.
Cheers,
------------------------------
Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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Cheers,
------------------------------
Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
------------------------------
I've been tinkering around a bit with this. If you look at the schema of the underlying DataTable for a Blue Prism Collection defined with a Column of type Date what you'll find in an extended property. This extended property seems to be what BP uses to map DateTime to Date and Time types.
When you create a column dynamically there's a property on the DataColumn type called ExtendedProperties. In theory, you should be able to add this custom property to that property collection and voila. 🤷♂️
Cheers,
------------------------------
Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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When you create a column dynamically there's a property on the DataColumn type called ExtendedProperties. In theory, you should be able to add this custom property to that property collection and voila. 🤷♂️
Cheers,
------------------------------
Eric Wilson
Director, Integrations and Enablement
Blue Prism Digital Exchange
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