How to Generate and Manipulate UTC Timestamp in "yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.SSS" Format in Azure Data Factory Dataflow

Question

I’m trying to generate the current UTC timestamp in the format yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.SSS and also add/subtract time in Azure Data Factory Dataflow.

I’m using formatDateTime(utcnow(), 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.SSS') to get the timestamp, and for time manipulation, I’ve tried dateAdd(utcnow(), 5, 'Minute') to add 5 minutes and dateAdd(utcnow(), -5, 'Minute') to subtract 5 minutes.

However, I’m unsure how to combine both the format and the time manipulation correctly. Any advice?

Answer 1

@Ananya patil

To generate a UTC timestamp in the format of yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSS, you can use either of the following expression that might give you the desired output format with the T separator.

concat(
    toString(toUTC(currentTimestamp(), 'yyyy-MM-dd')),
    'T',
    toString(toUTC(currentTimestamp(), 'HH:mm:ss.SSS'))
)

Adding and Subtracting Time: For adding or subtracting time, you can still use the addToTime() and subtractFromTime() functions.

Subtract 1 day:

concat(
    toString(toUTC(subtractFromTime(currentTimestamp(), 1, 'Day'), 'yyyy-MM-dd')),
    'T',
    toString(toUTC(subtractFromTime(currentTimestamp(), 1, 'Day'), 'HH:mm:ss.SSS'))
)

Add 1 hour:

concat(
    toString(toUTC(addToTime(currentTimestamp(), 1, 'Hour'), 'yyyy-MM-dd')),
    'T',
    toString(toUTC(addToTime(currentTimestamp(), 1, 'Hour'), 'HH:mm:ss.SSS'))
)

These expressions should help you achieve the desired format with the T character included.

I hope this information helps.

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