Roku Developer Program

[sjb64]

Was too focused thinking about formatting that I didn't even think about the datetime functions, much better and simpler approach.

[dunerunner]

"belltown" wrote:
There are too many significant digits to store in any of the Roku number types, but you can get the milliseconds value as a string:

dt = CreateObject ("roDateTime")
ms = dt.AsSeconds ().ToStr () + Right ("00" + dt.GetMilliseconds ().ToStr (), 3)
Print ms

The problem is I need the timestamp to be a numeric value to make calculations with it and only after that I need to convert it to string.
The direct conversion to string happens inside my ToMilliseconds function.

[sjb64]

Use a rotimespan with it's Mark ability or roappmanagers uptime field , then your only using deltas from the app start in your calculation? The seconds would be smaller, and you could still pull datetime for display using the method Belltown showed. I don't know your exact needs, but could this work?

[dunerunner]

I am writing an analytics library and need to track the exact time of user actions and send them to server. Sometimes I need to calculate the difference bertween two timestamps. that is why I need it to be numeric. If there were no calculations with the timestamps I would just store them as strings.

[sjb64]

I'd use an roDateTime to sent to the server, you shouldn't need MS for that, but if you do send seconds and MS as 2 fields if possible, or use the concatentation things from before to send to the server as a string, then use the roTimeSpan or roAppManager uptime to for the difference calculations.

[dunerunner]

Thank you for all your help, but the answer I came up with looks like this:

ToMilliseconds = Function(time, timestring = "")
    If time <> invalid 
      timestamp = time.AsSeconds()
      ms = time.GetMilliseconds()
      timestampString = timestamp.ToStr() + ms.ToStr()
    Else
      timestampString = timestring
    End If
    low = timestampString.Mid(timestampString.Len() - 9, 9).ToInt()
    high = timestampString.Mid(0, timestampString.Len() - 9).ToInt()
    output# = high
    output# = output# * 1000000000
    output# = output# + low
    
    return output#
  End Function 

And then:

time = CreateObject("roDateTime")
  timestamp = GetGlobalAA().util.ToMilliseconds(time)
  print timestamp
  
  part1 = Int(timestamp / 1000000).toStr().Trim()
  
  coolString = part1 + "000000"
  coolTimestamp = GetGlobalAA().util.ToMilliseconds(invalid, coolString)
  
  part2 = Str(timestamp - coolTimestamp).Trim()
  
  print part1
  print part2
  
  timeStampString = part1 + part2
  print "--------------"
  print timeStampString

BTW BrightScript is the best language in the World

[RokuMarkn]

"dunerunner" wrote:

      timestampString = timestamp.ToStr() + ms.ToStr()

I don't think that will work. Depending on the value of ms, you'll be appending either 1, 2 or 3 digits to timestamp.

--Mark

[sjb64]

Belltown's suggestion should fix that:

"belltown" wrote:
There are too many significant digits to store in any of the Roku number types, but you can get the milliseconds value as a string:

dt = CreateObject ("roDateTime")
ms = dt.AsSeconds ().ToStr () + Right ("00" + dt.GetMilliseconds ().ToStr (), 3)
Print ms

[dunerunner]

Thanks, fixed it.

[EnTerr]

All this pain and suffering. Seems like a case of "if something is too hard, perhaps you are approaching it the wrong way".

How about using roDateTime.toISOString()?
You get a timestamp which (a) can be used directly for comparisons (because of the format used, string lexical order gives you proper chronological order) and (b) can be converted server-side to native timestamp, if time differences are to be calculated.