Expert Solution for 2011 Scripting Games Beginner Event 7: Use PowerShell to Get the Number of Days Between Dates

Summary: Microsoft PFE, Michael Frommhold, uses Windows PowerShell to get the number of days between two dates as he solves Beginner Event 7 in one line of code.

Microsoft Scripting Guy, Ed Wilson, here. Michael Frommhold is the author for the expert commentary on Beginner Event 7. Michael has been a PFE in Germany since 2007 with expertise in these technologies: Active Directory, development, and platform.

Let’s see how we can solve Beginner Event 7.

Worked solution

First, it looks like we have to deal with dates—so let’s inspect dates in Windows Powershell. Handling with dates in Windows Powershell implements the usage of DateTime objects. Why? When using the Get-Date cmdlet, we receive a DateTime object.

Test:

Get-Date("7/31/11") | Get-Member

 

Output: TypeName: System.DateTime

 

Name                 MemberType     Definition

----                 ----------     ----------

…

Subtract             Method         System.TimeSpan Subtract(System.DateTime value)

…

As you can see, we found a method called Subtract. It seems to be very useful for our task, so let’s try to do the date math with this method of the DateTime object. We declare two DateTime objects $DeadLine and $Today and fill them with appropriate data.

$DeadLine -> As defined by our boss, we set the DateTime to July 31.
$Today -> The Get-Date cmdlet, called without any parameters, will return the actual date.

[DateTime] $DeadLine = Get-Date("7/31/11")

[DateTime] $Today = Get-Date

 

$DeadLine.Subtract($Today)  | Get-Member

 

Output: TypeName: System.TimeSpan

 

Name              MemberType Definition

----              ---------- ----------

…

Days              Property   System.Int32 Days {get;}

…

Using the Substract method of a DateTime object returns a TimeSpan object with the useful property Days. What do we get when we call this property today (3/29/11)?

Write-Host $DeadLine.Subtract($Today).Days

Output: 123

It already looks like we are close to the final solution. We just pass the info to the Windows PowerShell command line and we are finished.

Write-Host "There are $DeadLine.Subtract($Today).Days days until the end of the fiscal year"

Output: There are 07/31/2011 00:00:00.Subtract(03/29/2011 10:03:58).Days days until the end of the fiscal year

Unfortunately, it does not look like what were expecting. The problem is that Write-Host doesn’t know that $DeadLine.Subtract($Today).Days should be treated as a variable, so we must set the variable identifier $ first.

Write-Host "There are $($DeadLine.Subtract($Today).Days) days until the end of the fiscal year"

Output: There are 123 days until the end of the fiscal year

Because we have seen that the Substract method of the DateTime object returns a TimeSpan object, we can shorten our code by directly instantiating a TimeSpan object with the desired end date. Remember to add the variable identifier $ to our DateTime object Get-Date.

[TimeSpan] $Delta =  New-TimeSpan -End $(Get-Date("7/31/11"))

 

Write-Host "There are $($Delta.Days) days until the end of the fiscal year"

 

Output: There are 123 days until the end of the fiscal year

Wouldn’t it be nice to place the code in a ps-file and pass the deadline and the milestone as command line arguments? There are two ways to accomplish this: a quick n’ dirty one and an elegant one. I will show the quick n’ dirty method first.

Quick n’ dirty solution
Use the numbered items of the command-line arguments array $args, and hope the arguments will be given in the right order.

[DateTime] $End = Get-Date $args[0]

[String] $MileStone = $args[1]

 

Write-Host "There are $((New-TimeSpan -End $End).Days) days until $MileStone"

Call: deadlinereminder.ps1 7/31/11 "the end of the fiscal year"

Output: There are 123 days until the end of the fiscal year

Because we need a one-liner, we can shorten this to the following code.

Write-Host("There are {0} days until {1}” –f  (New-TimeSpan -End $(Get-Date $args[0])).Days, $($args[1]))

Call: deadlinereminder.ps1 7/31/11 "the end of the fiscal year"

Output: There are 123 days until the end of the fiscal year

To be honest, the string that passed into Write-Host cmdlet doesn’t look really readable. Let’s use the f switch (f = Format) to make this more readable. The numbers in curly brackets ({0} and {1}) are placeholders for the variables that follow the f:

Write-Host("There are {0} days until {1}” –f  (New-TimeSpan -End $(Get-Date $args[0])).Days, $($args[1]))

Call: deadlinereminder.ps1 7/31/11 "the end of the fiscal year"

Output: There are 123 days until the end of the fiscal year

Elegant solution

Define named command line arguments—we need not care about the correct order of the passed arguments. For the sake of reusability, we put the date math code in a function and call the function with the passed and properly translated values.

Name the command line arguments (EndDate and MileStone).

Param([String] $EndDate = "EndDate", [String] $MileStone = "MileStone")

Declare the date math function DeadLine.

Function DeadLine([DateTime] $End, [String] $MileStone)

{

Write-Host("There are {0} days until {1}" -f (New-TimeSpan -End $End).Days, $MileStone)

}

Translate the command line argument EndDate to a DateTime object, and call date math function.

DeadLine (Get-Date $EndDate) $MileStone

Put it all together.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

# Command line parsing using named arguments

Param([String] $EndDate = "EndDate", [String] $MileStone = "MileStone")

 

# Function doing the date math

Function DeadLine([DateTime] $End, [String] $MileStone)

{

Write-Host("There are {0} days until {1}" -f (New-TimeSpan -End $End).Days, $MileStone)

}

 

# Main code

DeadLine (Get-Date $EndDate) $MileStone

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Call: deadlinereminder.ps1 –EndDate 7/31/11 –MileStone "the end of the fiscal year"

Output: There are 123 days until the end of the fiscal year

Thank you Michael. I really appreciate you taking the time to write this solution.

I invite you to follow me on Twitter and Facebook. If you have any questions, send email to me at scripter@microsoft.com, or post your questions on the Official Scripting Guys Forum. See you tomorrow. Until then, peace.

Ed Wilson, Microsoft Scripting Guy