timerender

Overview

The timerender statement is used to create or update a column containing human-readable versions of UNIX timestamps

Syntax

timerendertimestampColasreadableCol

Details

When working with time-sensitive data, Exivity uses UNIX epoch timestamps (accurate to 1 second) which contain an integer representing the number of seconds that have elapsed since 00:00:00 on January 1st 1970.

These values can be generated from usage data using the timestamp statement and may be modified during aggregation, so in order to assist the development and debugging of Transcript tasks the timerender statement may be used to create human-readable versions UNIX timestamps as follows:

• The timestampCol parameter is the name of the column containing the UNIX timestamps to convert

• The readableCol parameter is the name fo the column to write the human-readable strings into

If the readableCol column does not exist, it will be created. If it does exist then the values in it will be updated.

If readableCol exists and the 'overwrite' option is disabled via option overwrite then only blank values will be updated

The human-readable timestamps contain fields for year month day hour minute second, eg: 20170518 17:00:00.

The timerender statement will always use the local timezone of the Exivity server when converting the timestamps. If other timezones are required then timestamp can be invoked with the offset option to adjust the UNIX timestamps as required

If any values in timestampCol are blank, or do not contain a valid UNIX timestamp then the value in readableCol on the same row will default to a blank value.

Example

# Import raw usage data
import "system\extracted\csp_usage.csv" source CSP alias usage

# Create UNIX start and end time columns from it
var template = YYYY.MM.DD.hh.mm.ss
timestamp START_TIME_UNIX using usageStartTime template ${template}
timestamp END_TIME_UNIX using usageEndTime template ${template}

# Render human-readable columns
timerender START_TIME_UNIX as START_TIME_HUMAN
timerender END_TIME_UNIX as END_TIME_HUMAN