Working with Dates and Date Formatting in Katalon Studio

Working with dates in Groovy is actually quite easy, once you understand the proper formatting. For my tests, I use the date to check when an import was run. Another use is to append the date to company names, prospect names and task subjects so I know when they were created and give each entry a slight bit of uniqueness.

To start, a variable needs to be set to the Date.

mydate = new Date() – Returns a full string of – Sun Jan 28 11:45:13 EST 2018

Once the date has been calculated from the system, it’s time to parse it into it’s competent pieces. The formatting looks similar to those used in spreadsheets.

Here are some examples and the returned results.

formattedDate = mydate.format(“MM/dd/yyyy”) – month, day, year

01/28/2018

formattedDate = mydate.format(“dd”) – Day

28

formattedDate = mydate.format(“MM”) – Month

01

formattedDate = mydate.format(“yyyy”) – Year

2018

formattedDate = mydate.format(“EEEE”) – Day as Text

Sunday

//Shows whether it is AM or PM

formattedDate = mydate.format(“a”)

AM

//Adds AM or PM to the end of the time

dateHour=mydate.format(“hh:mm:ss a”)

11:52:23 AM

dateHour=mydate.format(“HH:mm:ss”)

11:52:23

As noted, the date can be used at the end of names to make them unique. The following lines are used to get the current date and time, then append to the company name so it’s not the same name over and over again.

Note the / and : are separators and can be left out to form complete numbers.

//The date is appended to the name of the company to create randomness and show when the Prospect was created

mydate = new Date()

formattedDate = mydate.format(“MMddyyy”)

dateHour=mydate.format(“HHmmss”)

WebUI.setText(findTestObject(‘Page_/Prospect Page Objects/New Prospect Fields/Prospect-Company Name’), ‘Amazing New Company ‘ + formattedDate + dateHour)

This creates an entry with the text:

Amazing New Company – 01162018162000

The Date command can also be used in calculations. For example, you can get the date for today and determine the date for yesterday, or three days ago. The code below is used to check when the last import was run based on today’s date.

It first gets today’s date – today = new Date()

That is then used to calculate yesterday’s date – yesterday = today.previous()

If today is “Monday” the report should have run on “Friday” – 3 days ago (today -3)

— Going back three days without having to use calculations —

today = new Date()

yesterday = today.previous()

todayDate = today.format(‘MM/dd/yyyy’)

reportDate = yesterday.format(‘MM/dd/yyyy’)

dayOfWeek = today.format(‘EEEE’)

if (dayOfWeek == ‘Monday’) {

    yesterday = (today – 3)

    print(‘Yesterday is:’ + yesterday)

    reportDate = yesterday.format(‘MM/dd/yyyy’)

    println(‘The new import date is:’ + reportDate)

}

Other articles of interest:

• Using Sets to fill in Form Details with Katalon Studio
• Enter dates into a date picker for Chrome and Firefox
• Reviewing the Execution Logs of Katalon Studio
• Create a new and random UUID for an API call
• Waiting for Elements to appear in Katalon Studio
• A Try Catch example in Katalon Studio
• Currency Formatting with getCurrencyInstance()
• Katalon Studio – Creating Objects
• Entering and reading text GetText, SetText and SendKeys in Katalon Studio
• Marking tests as Passed, Failed or in Error using MarkFailed, MarkPassed, MarkError in Katalon Studio