choosing the right date format for data in json

Question

I am working with elastic search i want to create a search by range of dates i am thinking of using LocalDate for this only problem is my date in the json data looks like this

 {
        "departure": {
            "city": "\u041c\u0438\u043d\u0441\u043a",
            "date": "Aug 27, 2018 12:09:00 AM"
        },

I have a about 1000 of such so its not wise for me to change each date in json to yyyy-mm-dd format

my search method is in java as such.

 public List<Map<String, Object>> searchDao(LocalDate departureDateFrom, LocalDate departureDateTo,
                                               String countryOrCityOrHotel, int nights, int people, String departureCity) {
        List<Map<String, Object>> search = new ArrayList<>();


        QueryBuilder range = QueryBuilders.rangeQuery("date")
                 .from(departureDateFrom)
                 .to(departureDateTo)
                .includeLower(true)
                .includeUpper(true);

        QueryBuilder cityQuery = QueryBuilders.matchQuery("departure.city", departureCity);
        QueryBuilder nightsQuery = QueryBuilders.matchQuery("nights", nights);
        QueryBuilder peopleQuery = QueryBuilders.matchQuery("people", people);
        QueryBuilder destinationHotel = QueryBuilders.matchQuery("hotel.country", countryOrCityOrHotel);

How do i change my local date format to accepts such dates so its easier to work with data as they are.

Answer 1

You need to use a the right mapping in your index template: { "departure.date": { "type": "date" } }

And in your java code to write this:

QueryBuilder range = QueryBuilders.rangeQuery("date")
             .from(departureDateFrom)
             .to(departureDateTo)
             .format("MM dd yyyy hh:mm:ss")
             .includeLower(true)
             .includeUpper(true);

But in general its always a good idea to use epoch time when storing dates as strings are very fragile and formats tend to change all the time.