date manipulation capability is very limited with ansible

[navneet-rathi]

Summary

there is no module in ansible which can be helpful to manipulate dates easily like get date 1 day age or 1 week ago.need

Issue Type

Feature Idea

Component Name

to_datetime

Additional Information

      set_fact:
        currentdate_: "{{ '%Y-%m-%d' | strftime(ansible_date_time.epoch) }}"
        currentdate_hypen: "{{ '%Y-%m-%d' | strftime(ansible_date_time.epoch) }}"
        #formatted_date: "{{ current_date | strftime('%Y-%m-%d') }}"

    - name: Display the formatted date
      debug:
        msg: "Formatted date is {{ currentdate_ }}"
 
    - name: get yesterdays date
      ansible.builtin.shell: "date -d 'yesterday 13:00' '+%Y_%m_%d'"
      register: yesterday_

Code of Conduct

• I agree to follow the Ansible Code of Conduct

[ansibot]

Files identified in the description:

None

If these files are incorrect, please update the component name section of the description or use the component bot command.

[bcoca]

I would not use modules to manipulate data, they normally execute on a remote (set_fact/debug being controller actions and an exception). Use lookups to generate/query data and filters to change it:

    - name: get yesterdays date
      debug:
          msg: '{{ yestrdy }}'
      vars:
         yestrdy: '{{ lookup("pipe", "date -d \'yesterday 13:00 +%Y_%m_%d\'")}}'

[navneet-rathi]

I have already tried similar but if i want to print a date 1 week ago or a 1 month ago in different format

[sivel]

Is it insufficient to do some date math against ansible_date_time.epoch?

epoch_minus_1week: '{{ ansible_date_time.epoch - 86400 * 7 }}'

[Akasurde]

@navneet-rathi Can you please check the above message? Thanks

[navneet-rathi]

I have created a playbook to display the date manipulation. But it would have been great if we have a function like timedelta or something like in ansible.

Yes This way also works but need to write a code for this again and again if i want to display dates in different format
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/navneet-rathi/mysql/refs/heads/main/date.yml

[Akasurde]

@navneet-rathi Please take a look at ansible-collections/community.general#9831

[sivel]

Closing this issue, as we'll track this in the above community.general PR.

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