TeamCity Current Date variable in MMdd format - datetime

Question

In TeamCity is there an easy way to get a variable for the current date in the format MMdd (eg 0811 for 8-Aug)?
My google-fu did not turn up an existing plugins. I looked into writing a plugin, but not having a jdk installed, that looks time consuming.

Answer 1

This is quite easy to do with a PowerShell build step (no plugin required) using the following source code:
echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='env.BUILD_START_TIME' value='$([DateTime]::Now)']"
or (for UTC):
echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='env.BUILD_START_TIME' value='$([DateTime]::UtcNow)']"
This uses TeamCity's Service Message feature that allows you to interact with the build engine at runtime e.g. set build parameters.
You can then reference this build parameter from other places in TeamCity using the syntax %env.BUILD_START_TIME%
The advantage of this approach is you don't need to use a plugin. The disadvantage is you need to introduce a build step.

Answer 2

For Unix based build agents I propose next custom script as one of build commands:
export current_build_date_format="+%%Y.%%m.%%d"
export current_build_date="$(date $current_build_date_format)"
echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='env.current_build_date' value='$current_build_date']"
You have to make double % sign to avoid interpretation for date executable command line argument FORMAT string (see %Y.%m.%d) as already existing TeamCity variable.

Answer 3

The Groovy Plugin for TeamCity provides build start date/time properties:
Provides build properties:
system.build.start.date / env.BUILD_START_DATE
system.build.start.time / env.BUILD_START_TIME
This blog post has installation / configuration instructions for the Groovy plugin, as well an example of customizing the date/time format.

Answer 4

You can also try Date Build Number plug-in. It povides additional var in build number format rather than build property.

Answer 5

Similar to the Date Build Number plugin mentioned in this answer, there exists a derived plugin called Formatted Date Parameter. It provides a customizable parameter build.formatted.timestamp that can be used out of the box in fields or other parameters. No need for a separate build step.

Answer 6

An old question, but for those looking for a solution now there is a system parameter available.
system.buildStartTime
You need to declare it in config (it's not available until runtime) in order to run. I set mine to value [Filled Automatically]
As you can guess, this time is set to the build start time, so that may not be ideal for some needs. But it's easy and reliable.

Answer 7

To add a dated folder to my build in TeamCity I added the following to my custom script. What had me stuck was the double % sign in the date string. D'oh
TARGET_DIR=/Users/admin/build/daily
TARGET=$(date "+%%Y-%%m-%%d")
if [ ! -d ${TARGET_DIR} ]; then
mkdir -vp ${TARGET_DIR}/
fi
mv -v build.dmg ${TARGET_DIR}/build_${TARGET}.dmg

Answer 8

If you only want to have one-line bash command in a build step, just use as below.
echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='build.timestamp' value='$(date +%%m%%d)']"
(double % symbol is for TeamCity own escape rule to use % character)
It will set a MMdd parameter value right after the execution during runtime so very useful to put at any build step. Then, you can retrieve a parameter value afterward.
Note that you should create build.timestamp parameter firstly to TeamCity project.
A step further, I made a simple bash script to have bash date format timestamp. This script will set timestamp to whatever bash supported datetime format and parameter name to TeamCity.
name="" # TeamCity parameter name
format="%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%S%z" # ISO8601 format by default
result="" # a TeamCity parameter value to be set
for ARGUMENT in "$#"
do
KEY=$(echo "$ARGUMENT" | cut -f1 -d=)
VALUE=$(echo "$ARGUMENT" | cut -f2 -d=)
case "$KEY" in
name) name=${VALUE} ;;
format) format=${VALUE} ;;
*)
esac
done
result=$(date "+$format")
echo "##teamcity[setParameter name='$name' value='$result']"
Below usage will set ISO8601 format timestamp to build.timestamp parameter.
./teamcity_datetime.sh name=build.timestamp
If you want to set only MMdd, the execution could be as below.
./teamcity_datetime.sh name=build.timestamp format="%%m%%d"