topic Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format in SAS Programming

Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

Reggiete — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 05:14:09 GMT

Hello Everyone,

I am new to sas and I am trying to convert a character string which is in ISO8601 to datetime format in sas.

My code looks like this

proc sql;

Select appnum

,input(submitdate,datetime22.9) as Submitdate

from test

;quit;

submitdate is being pulled from an XML data source so its currently in varchar format

Could any help me with converting the submitdate(which is in iso8601) to datetime? I am new and I only use proc sql; since I have a sql background and still very new to SAS.

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

novinosrin — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 05:31:30 GMT

Have you tried this link yet?

http://support.sas.com/documentation/cdl/en/lrdict/64316/HTML/default/viewer.htm#a003169817.htm

You may want to apply one of these informat from the above link:

Datetime	YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.nnnnnn	2008-09-15T15:53:00	E8601DTw.d
Datetime with time zone	YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.nnnnnn+\|-hh:mm	2008-09-15T15:53:00+05:00	E8601DZw.d
Read date from a datetime	YYYY-MM-DD	2008-09-15	E8601DNw.

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

Reggiete — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 05:31:23 GMT

hey,

I found that page on a google search, but don't quite understand what I would need to do to convert from ISO8601 varchar to datetime22.9 format in SAS. using the above code.

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

novinosrin — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 05:33:16 GMT

The idea is to apply informat from the page and the informat should convert iso date to a datetime value of sas. Then you apply a datetime format on the numeric datetime value that you derived by applying the informat

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

Reeza — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 05:39:00 GMT

@Reggiete

Input ( your_variable, <informat - what variable currently looks like>) as new_variable format=<format - what you want variable to look like>

The INFORMAT is likely one from @novinosrin post and the format is DATETIME20.

The decimal portion of 9 is likely not what you actually want, so I would try datetime20 first.

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

Reggiete — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 06:22:35 GMT

would this be correct I still get an error.

input(date, informat=e8601dzw.d) as Date format=datetime20

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

novinosrin — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 06:28:58 GMT

input(date, informat=e8601dzw.d) as Date format=datetime20input(date, informat=e8601dzw.d) as Date format=datetime20

e8601dzw.d specify and remove informat=

specifies the width of the input field.

Range

1–32

specifies the power of 10 by which to divide the value. If the data contain decimal points, the d value is ignored. This argument is optional.

Range

0–31

Specify the informat just like you did earlier with a datetime example

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

Reeza — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 14:01:34 GMT

Not quite, the INPUT statement doesn't require the INFORMAT keyword.

input(date, e8601dz.) as Date format=datetime20.

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

Reggiete — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 16:26:20 GMT

hey reeza,

example of the date i am trying to convert '2015-12-14T12:00:29.3387979-05:00'

input(submitdate, E8601Dz.) as date format=datetime20.

i tried the above code and i get blanks

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

ballardw — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 23:43:06 GMT

Informats will have a default width if not supplied. In the case of E8601DZ that default is 26. Which for your example is in the middle of the decimal portion of the seconds which means the required part of -05:00 is not seen by the informat. Which will require using the W part of the format.

data junk;
   x= '2015-12-14T12:00:29.3387979-05:00';
   y=input(x,e8601dz33.);
   format y datetime20.;
   put y datetime20.;
run;

Informats, other thant when used in fixed column input statements, seldom have problems when W is larger than the input string's length.

If you have more decimals in the seconds you may want to use the maximum of W=35 in the informat.

Is your clock actually accurate to the millionth of a second???

Re: Convert ISO8601 string to datetime format

Reggiete — Thu, 14 Dec 2017 22:10:59 GMT

Thank you that worked! many thanks!