How to add/subtract minutes or hours etc. to a date?

Question

I need to send the appointment end time.  I only have the appointment start time and the duration in minutes.  How can I add the minutes to the start time so that the hours roll correctly?

Answer 1

// First import DateUtils. This class has a few apis that make it easy to add a value to a date.
var DateUtils = org.apache.commons.lang.time.DateUtils;

// Extract the start date from the message
var appointmentStartTime = qie.deduceDate(source.getNode("SCH-11.4"));

// Extract the duration from the message and convert it to an int. Times one will only work if this is just a number.
var durationInMinutes = source.getNode("SCH-9")*1;

// Use DateUtils to create a new date with the minutes added. To subtract add a negative number instead of a positve number
var appointmentEndTime = DateUtils.addMinutes(appointmentStartTime, durationInMinutes);

// Put the end time in the message
message.setNode("SCH-11.5", qie.formatDate('yyyyMMddHHmmss', appointmentEndTime));

For more ways to use DateUtils see:
http://commons.apache.org/proper/commons-lang/javadocs/api-2.3/index.html?org/apache/commons/lang/time/DateUtils.html