Being a former web developer and working with some scripting languages during the years, i must say that Powershell makes it so easy to work with dates.
Let’s see some code and tips&tricks for time and dates in Powershell.
Get current date
Get-Date
This returns the date in the format: Sunday, August 4, 2019 12:01:26 AM
Get current date and current time in a desired format
$date = Get-Date -format dd.MM.yyyy $time = Get-Date -format HH:mm:ss write-host $date + " " + $time
This will return 04.08.2019 01:06:26
For more types of formats check out the official Microsoft docs page.
Add days or minutes to current date
$AddMinutes = (Get-Date).AddMinutes(7) $AddDays = (Get-Date).AddDays(7) $AddMinutesToDate = (Get-Date).Date.AddMinutes(7) $AddDaysToDate = (Get-Date).Date.AddDays(7)
You might wonder why i made so many variables and what is the difference between them.
Let’s say the current date for me is Sunday, August 4, 2019 12:25:57 AM
The first two variables will result as:
$AddMinutes = Sunday, August 4, 2019 12:32:57 AM
$AddDays = Sunday, August 11, 2019 12:25:57 AM
So far everything seem good right? So what about the other two?
The last two variables will result as:
$AddMinutesToDate = Sunday, August 4, 2019 12:07:00 AM
$AddDaysToDate = Sunday, August 11, 2019 12:00:00 AM
If you add the extra parameter .Date, this will round up the date to 12:00:00 AM each time. So be careful how you construct it.
Add days or minutes to date from String (convert string to date)
Let’s say you have a date, but as a string in your script. If you want to try, for example, to add days to a simple string:
$StringDate = "04.08.2019" $AddDays = $StringDate.Date.AddDays(7)
You will receive and error saying that the variable $StringDate could not be converted to date.
So how do you convert a string to date in Powershell?
Well, it’s quite easy:
$StringDate = "04.08.2019" $AddDays = (Get-Date $StringDate).Date.AddDays(4)
This will result in $AddDays = 08.08.2019
Compare current date with string date
Usually, when you want to compare dates, you most certainly have a date in a string type of variable.
If you try something like:
$Date1 = "05.08.2019"
$Date2 = Get-Date
If ($Date1 -gt $Date2){
write-host "Date 1 is greater than Date 2"
}
You will see that this will fail. In order to make any date comparisons, you must convert you string to date.
The correct way to do this is:
$Date1 = "05.08.2019"
$Date2 = Get-Date
If ((get-date $Date1) -gt (get-date $Date2)){
write-host "Date 1 is greater than Date 2"
}
With the Get-Date before the $Date1 variable, this converts your string to a date, thus the comparison will work.
Do you have any other Date scenarios that i missed here? Leave me a message.
