Datetime to Date. It’s not so easy.

How can you convert datetime variable to date? Some of you can say: “It is easy. Use DT2DATE() function”. But what will be the result? What we will see in Nav user interface and what will be actually stores in the database? What if we are going to call function using web services?

Let’s conduct some experiments.

I work on computer with Russian time setting (UTC+03:00)

I created a table with 3 fields (“ID”, "DateTime Field" and "Date Field") and simple codeunit  to fill a record with ID = 0;

It just converts datetime data to date:

OnRun()

InDate := CREATEDATETIME(190617D, 232300T);

Test(InDate);

Test(InDateTime : DateTime)

temp.GET(0);

temp."DateTime Field" := InDateTime;

temp."Date Field" := DT2DATE(InDateTime);

temp.MODIFY;

It turned out that result would depend on:

-   How you call test function. From Nav code or using web service.

I used the following SOAP request:

<soapenv:Envelope xmlns:soapenv="http://schemas.xmlsoap.org/soap/envelope/" xmlns:tes="urn:microsoft-dynamics-schemas/codeunit/TestDateTime">

   <soapenv:Header/>

   <soapenv:Body>

      <tes:Test>

         <tes:inDateTime>2017-06-19T23:23:00</tes:inDateTime>

      </tes:Test>

   </soapenv:Body>

</soapenv:Envelope>

-   The setting "Services Default Time Zone" on General Tab of our instance

Possible values for this field you can find here

https://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/hh169363(v=nav.90).aspx

To understand how it works on the edges of the day I put it in two tables:

At the end of day:

Input datetime variable = 19.06.2017 23:23

And at the beginning:

So be careful and watch your watch :)