monthname - script and chart function

This function returns a display value showing the month (formatted according to the MonthNames script variable) and year with an underlying numeric value corresponding to a timestamp of the first millisecond of the first day of the month.

Syntax:

MonthName(date[, period_no])

Return data type: dual

Arguments:

Argument	Description
date	The date to evaluate.
period_no	period_no is an integer, which, if 0 or omitted, indicates the month that contains date. Negative values in period_no indicate preceding months and positive values indicate succeeding months.

These examples use the date format DD/MM/YYYY. The date format is specified in the SET DateFormat statement at the top of your data load script. Change the format in the examples to suit your requirements.

Example

Result

monthname('19/10/2013')

Returns Oct 2013.
Because in this and the other examples, the SET Monthnames statement is set to Jan;Feb;Mar, and so on.

monthname('19/10/2013', -1)

Returns Sep 2013.

Add the example script to your app and run it. Then add, at least, the fields listed in the results column to a sheet in your app to see the result.

In this example, for each invoice date in the table, the month name is created from the month name shifted four months from base_date, and from the year.

TempTable:

LOAD RecNo() as InvID, * Inline [

InvDate

28/03/2012

10/12/2012

5/2/2013

31/3/2013

19/5/2013

15/9/2013

11/12/2013

2/3/2014

14/5/2014

13/6/2014

7/7/2014

4/8/2014

];

InvoiceData:

LOAD *,

MonthName(InvDate, 4) AS MthName

Resident TempTable;

Drop table TempTable;

The resulting table contains the original dates and a column with the return value of the monthname() function. In

InvDate	MthName
28/03/2012	Jul 2012
10/12/2012	Apr 2013
5/2/2013	Jun 2013
31/3/2013	Jul 2013
19/5/2013	Sep 2013
15/9/2013	Jan 2014
11/12/2013	Apr 2014
2/3/2014	Jul 2014
14/5/2014	Sep 2014
13/6/2014	Oct 2014
7/7/2014	Nov 2014
4/8/2014	Dec 2014

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