Cannot format date

[bsinou]

Hi,

First, thanks for the great job, it helps a lot! I yet have an issue while handling dates.

Expected Behavior

Start and End (retrieved with currentDate) timestamps should be displayed using iso format.

Current Behavior

Date are generated in the form of 8/31/23, 9:00 AM, both in previews and in the payload that is sent to the webhook.

Steps to Reproduce (for bugs)

1. Define a new template with
   • Date Format: yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ssZ
   • Payload Format: jsonVelocityTemplate
2. Get the date in the json with eg:

{
        "TimeStarted": "${buildStartTime}", 
        "TimeEnd": "${currentTime}"
}

3. Try both preview and webhook => dates are still wrongly formatted.

I have also tried to get access to the dateTool object [1] without success.

Your Environment

• tcWebHooks Version: Initially tried with 1.2.2 (from the market place) and then also with 1.2.4 and 2.0.0-rc2 (directly from github)
• TeamCity Version: 2023.05.3

Any hint would be greatly appreciated.

[1]: Seems like it has been added for 1.2.4 at least

[netwolfuk]

Thanks for raising this bug. What you're doing should be working. I'll take a look when I get to a computer.

[netwolfuk]

I can't see why setting the dateformat on the template is not working. I'll try to do some more investigation on the weekend.

I was able to use datetool (in version 1.2.4) with the following Velocity template...

{
        "startDate": "$dateTool.format('iso_tz', ${build.StartDate.Time})"
        "currentTime": "$dateTool.format('iso_tz', $dateTool)"
}

outputs...

{
        "startDate": "2023-08-07T22:57:38Z"
        "currentTime": "2023-09-01T10:23:28Z"
}

$dateTool appear to use some odd formatting style (not the normal one as you would expect).
See https://velocity.apache.org/tools/devel/apidocs/org/apache/velocity/tools/generic/DateTool.html

[netwolfuk]

I'll also patch 2.0.0 with the dateTool so that is same as 1.2.4 and release a new 2.0 RC. Hopefully will get that out on the weekend too.

[netwolfuk]

You may have already seen this issue all about dates: #222
With some more examples on using dateTool with the objects in the template.

[netwolfuk]

I was able to get $dateTool to use SimpleDateFormat format by setting a variable and then referencing...

#set($myDate = $dateTool.format("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ",$dateTool))
{
        "iso_tz": "$dateTool.format('iso_tz',$dateTool)",
        "myDate": "$myDate"
}

It doesn't use Z for zulu time, but prints the offset (+0000)

{   
        "iso_tz": "2023-09-01T10:58:12Z",   
        "myDate": "2023-09-01T10:58:12+0000" 
}

[netwolfuk]

Or you can set the format....

#set($myDate = $dateTool.format("yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ",$dateTool))
#set($myFormat = "yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ssZ")

{
        "iso_tz": "$dateTool.format('iso_tz',$dateTool)",
        "myDate": "$myDate",
        "myFormat": "$dateTool.format($myFormat,$dateTool)"
}

{
        "iso_tz": "2023-09-01T11:03:15Z",
        "myDate": "2023-09-01T11:03:15+0000",
        "myFormat": "2023-09-01T11:03:15+0000"
}

[bsinou]

Thanks a lot for all these explanations and tips.

This indeed fixes my problem until the date format issue is solved.

"endDate": "$dateTool.format('iso_tz',$dateTool)",

For the record yet, I could not have it work with v2-rc2: I had to revert both pluging (webhook and REST) to the 1.2.4

[netwolfuk]

Yeah, sorry about that. The date tool is very new and I haven't released an updated 2.0.0: with it included yet.

[bsinou]

No need to be sorry :)
You already saved my day with all your explanations and your prompt answer! Thanks again.

[netwolfuk]

Hmm. There are lots of interesting bug in this behaviour.

1. Previewing or executing in the template editor fails to pass the templateId or the preferredDateTime. Therefore the code has no way to determine how to resolve the date format you want.
2. Previewing or executing the webhook from the webhook edit dialog box, throws a GSON exception.
   Update: My JSON was missing some commas, so it was not well defined. Once that was fixed the webhook preview worked.
3. Executing a webhook from a build event does work (I tested with pinned event).

Result: Preview/test from the template editor does not support preferredDateTime. This is a bug.

[michaeloa]

Hi @netwolfuk,

Is this issue fixed in 2.x? Started working on this after summer, and I've got everything else working (finally), except this - I'm trying to set Date Format to yyyy-MM-dd"T"hh:mm:ssX, but the template engine just seems to ignore it completely.

I'm not using velocity templates, because when I do, the custom variables I'm picking up for the webhook don't seem to be accessible anymore (or maybe I'm addressing them wrongly). Anyway, any ideas would be appreciated.

[netwolfuk]

Hi @michaeloa Sorry to reply to your question with more questions...

Previewing or executing in the template editor fails to pass the templateId or the preferredDateTime. Therefore the code has no way to determine how to resolve the date format you want.

I don't think I fixed this. Is this the bug you are referring?

Note: this is using the template preview button. DateFormat is expected to work when previewing a webhook (from the webhook edit dialog) or when actually triggering a webhook (eg from a build event).

Or are you referring to something else?

Can you share some more about the velocity template variable issue?
Which template engine would you prefer to use?
Can you share the template you have so I can understand and test the actual code you're using?
Can you describe for me the exact steps you are using to see the behavior you define as...

I'm trying to set Date Format to yyyy-MM-dd"T"hh:mm:ssX, but the template engine just seems to ignore it completely.

[michaeloa]

So, I'm building a Webhook to send info to an Atlassian system, which requires a unique ID generated by that system. I think we discussed this before the summer, but I have resolved that by adding a little script in the build jobs that publishes the required ID to the environment as the first step of each build job.

So then I have a jsonTemplate (JSON Standard Template) that looks something like this:

{
    "atlassian_id": ${atlassian.service.id},
     ....
    "build_start_time": "${buildStartTime}",
    "build_end_time": "${currentTime}",
}

In the template, I then set the Date Format to be: yyyy-MM-ddThh:mm:ssX .

The preview template returns:

{
  "atlassian_id": "id:cloud:horrible:long:unintelligible:key:string",
  ...
  "build_start_time": "8/14/25, 7:36 AM",
  "build_end_time": "8/14/25, 11:23 AM",
}

I've tried various way of specifying the Date Format through the GUI, but none of them result in any change in preview (and test calls through the API fail, and while I can't see what it sends to the webhook since this is an external system, I know that if I send the template data with the dates in ISO format, the manual curl goes through). The problem seems very clearly to be the datetime formatting.

I've tried to shift this over to JSON Velocity Template. In that case, I can replace currentTime with #now and use dateTool formatting, and that works. But then velocity template no longer picks up the service ID from the environment. I also don't see that the buildStartTime is getting picked up, but I assume that is just me not using the right variable syntax somehow (which may also be the problem with the ID?)