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If I have a query, that returns a date or time range, how do get the upper or lower bound?

For example, Ramadan 1436 returns: Thursday, June 18, 2015 to Friday, July 17, 2015 Another example is fajr time in New York City, which returns a range.

How do I pull out the start or end of any range, to chain it up with other queries?

I'm only interested in a generic solution, not a specific one.

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I don't think W|A will meet your needs. It is not apparently designed to support complex chaining of datetime calculations. As proof, observe the following ...

first day of (ramadan 1436) in Gregorian calendar = Thursday, June 18, 2015

correct

hours from ( 12:01 am UTC, Thursday, June 18, 2015) to (23:59 pm UTC, Friday, July 17, 2015) = 720 hours aka 30 days

correct

but a simple substitution in brackets gives ...

hours from ( 12:01 am UTC, (first day of (ramadan 1436) in Gregorian calendar)) to (23:59 pm UTC, Friday, July 17, 2015)

... a senseless answer by adding in extra assumed terms.

as regard finding fractions of datetime ranges only basic queries seem to work. For example

0.75 * (hours from ( 12:01 am UTC, Thursday, June 18, 2015) to (23:59 pm UTC, Friday, July 17, 2015)) = 540 hours

works

but W|A cannot understand adding a start date to that as follows ...

( 12:01 am UTC, Thursday, June 18, 2015) + (0.75 * (hours from ( 12:01 am UTC, Thursday, June 18, 2015) to (23:59 pm UTC, Friday, July 17, 2015)))

answer to earlier version of question

this works for the first day

first day of (ramadan 1436) in Gregorian calendar = Thursday, June 18, 2015

and this works for the final day

(first day of (ramadan 1436) in Gregorian calendar) + (number of days in ramadan 1436) - (1 day) = Friday, July 17, 2015

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  • How would you do it for time ranges? Commented May 29, 2015 at 11:19
  • not sure I understand clearly. "Thursday, June 18, 2015 to Friday, July 17, 2015" is a "time range". can you give an exact example of a "time range" and exactly the answer you expect ? please. You might want to consider asking this as a separate question. Commented May 29, 2015 at 11:27
  • Initially I was going to add one, as searching on W|A for prayer times would give a start and end range as a time (rather than a date). But that feature doen't seem to be working at the moment... Commented May 29, 2015 at 11:29
  • would something like "time of Fajr today in new york city" help you ? Commented May 29, 2015 at 11:49
  • time of Fajr today in new york city give me: 3:30 am EDT to 5:30 am EDT which again a range. Is there a generic way to get that? Commented May 29, 2015 at 11:51

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