SQLite / IFTTT Date Formatting

[ analysis-recipe , ifttt , sqlite ]

Convert January 01, 2018 at 01:50PM to 2018-01-01T13:50

Overview

  1. Intro
  2. Problem
  3. Data
  4. Solution
  5. Walkthrough
  1. Conclusion

Intro

Tools like harelba/q and SQLite are powerful for doing local analysis on personal datasets and ISO 8601 is a fine standard for storing date and time data. SQLite expects date strings to be formatted this way. Unfortunately, not every service creates dates in this format. IFTTT in particular creates timestamps in a very odd format - likely aimed at consumption by humans. You can reformat these strings using a tool of your choosing prior to loading into SQLite or you can format them within your queries. This is a guide to formatting date strings using SQLite-flavored SQL.

Problem

When you use the “Add Row to Spreadsheet” action in IFTTT (which the majority of my Applets use), you have access to an OccurredAt ingredient which you will use to attach the timestamp to each row. However, when you look at your spreadsheet the timestamp will look something like: January 06, 2017 at 06:27PM (as of 2018-03-11). This string is not ISO 8601 compliant. And there isn’t a way to customize the date format via IFTTT (as of 2018-03-11).

If you intend to download this sheet as csv and do local analysis, you’ll need to reformat these values in order to use sqlite date functions like strftime. This is important because it unlocks the ability to use date modifiers and extract individual fragments from a date such as the week of year or day of week.

Data

In this example we’ll use a dataset that looks like one you would export from an IFTTT created google sheet.

 head -n 5 ./my-sheet.csv

"January 01, 2018 at 10:31AM",run,34.02130458,-118.4203004,https://ifttt.com/share/DSmnc9Dc9wM,,"https://maps.google.com/?q=34.0213045822793,-118.420300388416&z=16"
"January 01, 2018 at 10:49AM",run,34.02132238,-118.420358,https://ifttt.com/share/8hwhWk2B9wM,,"https://maps.google.com/?q=34.0213223817022,-118.420357970281&z=16"
"January 01, 2018 at 12:32PM",run,34.02138991,-118.4205079,https://ifttt.com/share/qmHTzhvMcwM,,"https://maps.google.com/?q=34.021389908732,-118.420507914225&z=16"
"January 01, 2018 at 01:22PM",run,34.02694743,-118.4133058,https://ifttt.com/share/knZxfTQPdwM,,"https://maps.google.com/?q=34.0269474311501,-118.413305830858&z=16"
"January 01, 2018 at 01:50PM",run,34.02128426,-118.420437,https://ifttt.com/share/g77ZC6JqfwM,,"https://maps.google.com/?q=34.0212842588202,-118.42043704072&z=16"

Note there is no header row. Column 1 contains the IFTTT formatted date string.

q -d "," "SELECT c1 FROM ./my-sheet.csv"

"January 01, 2018 at 10:31AM"
"January 01, 2018 at 10:49AM"
"January 01, 2018 at 12:32PM"
"January 01, 2018 at 01:22PM"
"January 01, 2018 at 01:50PM"

We’ll need to craft a query that will convert dates like this:

Solution

q -d "," "select substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),5,4)||'-'||substr('00' || CASE substr(c1, 0, instr(c1, ' ')) WHEN 'January' THEN 01 WHEN 'February' THEN 02 WHEN 'March' THEN 03 WHEN 'April' THEN 04 WHEN 'May' THEN 05 WHEN 'June' THEN 06 WHEN 'July' THEN 07 WHEN 'August' THEN 08 WHEN 'September' THEN 09 WHEN 'October' THEN 10 WHEN 'November' THEN 11 WHEN 'December' THEN 12 END, -2)||'-'||substr('00'||substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),1,2),-2)||'T'||substr('00' || CASE WHEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) = 12 and substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) = 'AM' THEN 0 WHEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) = 12 and substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) = 'PM' THEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) WHEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) >= 1 and cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) < 12 and substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) = 'AM' THEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) WHEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) >= 1 and cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) < 12 and substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) = 'PM' THEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER)+12 END, -2)||':'||substr('00'||substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':')+1, 2),-2) as timestamp from ./my-sheet.csv"

Walkthrough

The solution above works but it is incomprehensible. Here are the steps this query performs in order to convert January 01, 2018 at 01:50PM to 2018-01-01T13:50:

Year

substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),5,4)

Month

Extract everything up to the first space in the string:

SELECT SUBSTR(c1, 0, INSTR(c1, ' ')) AS month

Convert the month string to a two-digit integer:

CASE substr(c1, 0, instr(c1, ' ')) WHEN 'January' THEN 01 WHEN 'February' THEN
02 WHEN 'March' THEN 03 WHEN 'April' THEN 04 WHEN 'May' THEN 05 WHEN 'June' THEN
06 WHEN 'July' THEN 07 WHEN 'August' THEN 08 WHEN 'September' THEN 09 WHEN
'October' THEN 10 WHEN 'November' THEN 11 WHEN 'December' THEN 12 END AS month

Day

substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),1,2)

Time

Extract Minute:

substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13,7),4,2) AS minute

Extract AM/PM:

substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) as ampm

Extract original hour value:

cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) as hour12

We have to coerce/cast the original hour value string into an integer before converting it so we can do integer comparisons on it during the conversion.

Pseudocode algorithm to convert the hour value from 12-hour clock to 24-hour clock:

CASE
  WHEN hour12 = 12 and ampm = 'AM'
    THEN 00
  WHEN hour12 = 12 and ampm = 'PM'
    THEN hour12
  WHEN hour12 >= 1 and hour12 < 12 and ampm = 'AM'
    THEN hour12
  WHEN hour12 >= 1 and hour12 < 12 and ampm = 'PM'
    THEN hour12+12
END

When you substitute the actual query for hour12 and ampm it gets much longer, but it is still the same as above in structure:

CASE
  WHEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) = 12 and substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) = 'AM'
    THEN 0
  WHEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) = 12 and substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) = 'PM'
    THEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER)
  WHEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) >= 1 and cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) < 12 and substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) = 'AM'
    THEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER)
  WHEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) >= 1 and cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER) < 12 and substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13),-2) = 'PM'
    THEN cast(substr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), instr(substr(ltrim(substr(c1, instr(c1, ' '))),13), ':'), -2) as INTEGER)+12
END as hour24

Zero padding

There is no direct function to zero-pad the string representations of integers in sqlite. However, there is a handy trick I found on stackoverflow

-- left-pad with zeroes a field called `month` to two digits
substr('00' || month, -2)

ISO 8601

Put it all together and the pseudo code looks like:

year||'-'||substr('00' || month, -2)||'-'||substr('00'||dom,-2)||'T'||substr('00' || hour24, -2)||':'||substr('00'||minutes,-2) as iso8601

Conclusion

This is a specific problem and solution, but the techniques here can be used to format other non-standard date formats.

Updated At: 2024-03-16 16:07 +0000 (2d53252)

🛠 by Tom Hummel