Spreadsheet App converting Date()

Question

Problem: Spreadsheet isn't recognizing an input date as a Date(), so I can't get the .getTime() from it in Apps Script.

Question: Can you see why this is?

Results: Here is a part of the script I'm running:

dates.map(function(inp) {
  if (inp != undefined && inp !== ""){
    inp = new Date(inp.getTime() - (date.getTimezoneOffset()*60000);
    return inp
  }
});

where dates refers to a range: dates = sheet.getRange(2,1, lastR, 1).getValues();

Currently this range has a manually inputed value of "2017-05-20" which Spreadsheet automagtically recognizes as the date "Sat May 20 2017 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (CEST)"

The error reads as follows:

TypeError: Cannot find function getTime in object Sat May 20 2017 00:00:00 GMT+0200 (CEST). (line 86, file "Code") Details Dismiss

I have tried a million ways throughout my script to get Spreadsheet to stop autoconverting the input values as dates, so that I can make then at least timestamps or something. Does any one know why it is doing this?

Answer 1

Even if you call getValues() on a one-column range it will still be an array of arrays.

What's confusing here is that GAS tries to be helpful and displays the only value in the one-element array.

Extracting the first element from the row should fix this issue.

dates.map(function(row) {
  var inp = row[0];
  if (inp != undefined && inp !== ""){
    inp = new Date(inp.getTime() - (date.getTimezoneOffset()*60000);
    return inp
  }
});

Answer 2

If you insist on doing everything via Array.prototype.map(), the following code might work. I ignored your date manipulation logic, adding 5 days to the date in the cell instead. For the values to update, you must assign whatever Array.prototype.map() returns to a variable. Also, 2 separate checks for empty string and 'undefined' are redundant as JavaScript actually considers them both to be 'false' (Unfortunately, this applies to 0 as well, so be careful)

       function getDates() {

          var ss = SpreadsheetApp.getActiveSpreadsheet();
          var sheet = ss.getSheets()[0];
          var range = sheet.getRange(2, 1, sheet.getLastRow() - 1, 1);
          var values = range.getValues();

          var newValues = values.map(function(row) {

          var newRow = row.map(function(value){

          if (value){

          value = new Date(value.getTime() + 3600000*24*5) // adding 5 days

          return value;

        }

   });

   return newRow;

  });

   range.setValues(newValues);


}

Answer 3

I ended up taking Robin's recommendation, and did the following, which worked:

 rows.map(function(r) {
        r.day = new Date(r.day.getTime() - (date.getTimezoneOffset()*60000));
        r.day = r.day.toISOString().split('T')[0];
        return r
      })

where date was globally defined as date = new Date() , "rows" the rows which have data in them, and "day" is the column name (of the first row [0] I had defined earlier in the script) for the column of dates I was trying to change.

Thanks again!