1550-1560 date range selector in a simple dashboard showing 1000 locations across the UK

Question

Hi All,

I have a dashboard map with just over 1000 locations across the UK. I have successfully created a number of selectors but what I really need is the ability to show locations based on the date assigned to them (specific dates and ranges covering a year, a month etc.). My chronological range is 1550-1560 and all dates are in the DD/MM/YYYY format. I have been experimenting with different date selector setting for many hours but no filtering ever happens. Please help!

Tom2 · Answer

Many thanks for this. I may try this solution if I can't get my method to work. Having done more research I followed someone's advice to add a new Date field in the featured layer's data and copy the contents of the original Date column there. It went relatively smoothly and once the data is displayed in Dashboard the Target field in the date selector now shows my duplicate date column. I select it and lo and behold I can now do all the wondrous things with the 1000+ dates in my map that I have always dreamt of doing. There is a but though. For reasons which I struggle to comprehend the duplicate date field displays my original date of '1/13/1555' in this format '1/12/1555, 11:58 PM'. In other words all dates show the day before. I'm guessing this has something to do with time zones but how to fix this I don't know.

KimOllivier · Answer

Date arithmetic is awful. The best thing is to convert all date fields
to ISO strings. Then comparisons and ranges are easy and if you need to
do date arithmetic you can convert the ISO to a date object easily. ISO
format is set up so that dates are in string sort order, the timezone
can be appended (UTC = Z) or the offset added. It is easy to get a
subset to extract part of the date because they are in fixed widths.
Date formats often do not go before 1970 (Microsoft), 1900 (Unix) so
don't use them.

KimOllivier · Answer

Date arithmetic is awful. The best thing is to convert all date fields to ISO strings. Then comparisons and ranges are easy and if you need to do date arithmetic you can convert the ISO to a date object easily. ISO format is set up so that dates are in string sort order, the timezone can be appended (UTC = Z) or the offset added. It is easy to get a subset to extract part of the date because they are in fixed widths. Date formats often do not go before 1970 (Microsoft), 1900 (Unix) so don't use them.