Cast Invalid Error

Question

Hi All, 
 I found some strange behavior with the below expressions related to date and time. 
 {
 /* All these worked */
 now() + second() * 62,
 now() + minute() * 5,
 now() + hour() * 5,
 now() + day() * 5,
 
 /* These didn't work */
 now() + month() * 5,
 now() + year() * 5
} 
 Can someone please explain why the last 2 statements don't work, and throw cast invalid error?

Harsha Sharma · Answer

In order to use tointervalds() function here, you need to calculate the no of days in upcoming 5 (or required number of) months, and then replace 5 with that value. now() returns date time and it only can add/subtract in days so you need to convert year/month into days so that addition/subtraction can happen with now(). 
 As an alternative, if your usecase is to add a specific number of months/years to a date I suggest you to take a look at plugin Date and Time Utilities in the app market. Functins addmonths() & addyears() can help you here! 
 {
 addseconds(now(), 62),
 addminutes(now(), 5),
 addhours(now(), 5),
 adddays(now(), 5),
 addmonths(now(), 5),
 addyears(now(), 5)
}

Harsha Sharma · Answer

All the working ones return value in interval day to second while month() and year() return value in interval year to month . One way to make this work is by converting data returned from month() and year() into interval of day to second. You can use the function tointervalds () to achieve this. 
 {
 /* All these worked */
 now() + second() * 62,
 now() + minute() * 5,
 now() + hour() * 5,
 now() + day() * 5,
 
 now() + tointervalds(month())*5 ,
 now() + tointervalds(year())*5 
}

Cast Invalid Error

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