Support date comparisons, e.g. less than, greater than

[patkujawa-wf]

Problem to solve

I've captured two dates and want to assert that one is earlier than the other, but I get a type error:

65 | jsonpath "$.results[0].created_at" toDate "%+" format "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S" toDate "%a, %d %b %Y %H:%M:%S" < {{ request_date }}
   |   actual:   date <2024-12-04 17:54:52 UTC>
   |   expected: less than date <2024-12-04 18:26:57 UTC>
   |   >>> types between actual and expected are not consistent

Proposal

Expand the comparison predicates (e.g. https://hurl.dev/docs/grammar.html#less-predicate) to allow dates as well as the current numbers and strings.

Relates somewhat to #798

Alternatives

I see that https://hurl.dev/docs/filters.html#daysbeforenow is one filter, but I need something on the order of seconds rather than days, so perhaps a secondsBeforeNow filter could be used for both dates (or in my case I can just hardcode a value of 5 seconds).

[ashishajr]

Hey @jcamiel, I'd love to pick this one up next.

I dug around the code a bit and looked at the PR which added predicates to String, let me know if this approach works.

hurl/packages/hurl/src/runner/value_impl.rs

Lines 29 to 35 in cb62edf

	pub fn compare(&self, other: &Value) -> Result<Ordering, EvalError> {
	match (self, other) {
	(Value::String(s1), Value::String(s2)) => Ok(s1.cmp(s2)),
	(Value::Number(n1), Value::Number(n2)) => Ok(n1.cmp_value(n2)),
	_ => Err(EvalError::Type),
	}
	}

I'd have to add Value::Date in the match arm here and use cmp which is a present as a trait for DateTime<Utc>

https://docs.rs/chrono/latest/chrono/struct.DateTime.html#method.cmp

That should do it right, or are there any other changes that would be necessary to make this work as well?

[jcamiel]

Hi @ashishajr yes it's exactly right