Date argument type for slash commands

[macdja38]

Description

it would be nice to allow users to specify a Date or time delta. Discord already has a date picker (though possibly not a date & time picker) would be fantastic if we could use that.

Why This is Needed

Lots of commands schedule things it'd be very useful for those. For example I have a command to create events for a specific date. Right now users have to type out the time zone, which is super unfriendly.

Alternatives Considered

Right now we can allow for strings, which is decent but puts the burden of specifying a time zone and correct formatting on the user
Eg users will have to supply January 19, 20:00 EST or similar.

We can use NLP techniques for time deltas so that's less important
Eg parsing in 5 minutes is pretty easy with an off the shelf npm library and doesn't require a time zone.

Additional Details

A way of displaying dates in a user's timezone would also be a fantastic pairing. Embed footers at the moment are significantly lacking as they only display the date instead of date + time.

If I want to schedule say a movie night or something and I put the date in text I have to specify a time zone and users have to convert it themselves... If I put it in the embed footers users don't get told the time until the day of... which is less than ideal.

The format used in the footer is also less than ideal being simply day/month/year which has some ambiguity among locations (maybe it's localized I'm not sure, but either way I've heard users having trouble trusting it) Would be nice to have a more full date format.

[Arrem]

For me, the main obvious benefit here is that Discord can (presumably) determine the user's timezone and could do a conversion and send a UTC timestamp to the bot, which would be a great improvement in usability. We've definitely struggled with timezones in our commands (and displayed messages) before.

[ghost]

Would be also nice if users could input something like 1m, 1h, 1d etc... This is useful for things like timers and some commands that are temporary for example a temp-mute command.

[jonahsnider]

A date and a duration are different things, both of which should be added.

[erkinalp]

Well, the two are the same in representation, just differing in interpretation.

[n3oney]

This is a necessity for slash commands. There are so many commands that require time input. Giveaways? Temp-mutes? Temp-bans? Temporary roles? I don't like the idea of passing dates as a string type, that's way too arbitrary and will probably result in users getting confused or mistyping something, or the bots setting the wrong timezones for the users.

[ghost]

A way of displaying dates in a user's timezone would also be a fantastic pairing. Embed footers at the moment are significantly lacking as they only display the date instead of date + time.

Isn't that just this? https://discord.com/developers/docs/reference#message-formatting-timestamp-styles

[n3oney]

A way of displaying dates in a user's timezone would also be a fantastic pairing. Embed footers at the moment are significantly lacking as they only display the date instead of date + time.

Isn't that just this? https://discord.com/developers/docs/reference#message-formatting-timestamp-styles

Yes, this was posted 6 months ago.

[alercah]

I've been working around this for now by accepting the time-format tags as a valid input. I.e. parsing out the Unix timestamp from <t:XXXX:?>. People are starting to get familiar enough with these to embed into messages directly that it seemed like the best choice.

[ElOxo]

Bump i Still need DateOption for slash commands

[Jorrex]

I vote for this - my bot has a command that allows creating an event, but the date parsing via string isn't perfect and a date option would make life so much easier to have the start and end date immediately

[NargiT]

definitly a good idea to avoid magic parsing

[guidojw]

Still very much waiting for this 👀
I have a few interactions that accept date and time as input and my fellow other timezoners are now accustomed to converting their time to CET/CEST and inputting that, but something like a date/time picker would be very convenient.

[JRQuimora]

still waiting, this will help users pass a date and time instead of typing it

[JDJGInc]

I think two things would be good for this

like a word or since

like 2 hours ago
2 hours later

but also the date time picker from events.

[JacksonVirgo]

This would be incredibly useful for my own projects. I currently need to have the user select a particular date/time to perform an action, the current ways of doing this that I've found are horrible with their user experience which are

• Have an external site dashboard hooked up, directs off of Discord
• Have a clunky embed with buttons
• Request a UNIX timestamp or similar, which is bad for the less tech-inclined
• Have users enter plaintext which I then try and parse a date and time from.

All these options are horrible for the user experience compared to having a date/time picker (and also the dev experience) so having this available would be a godsend.

All it would need to do is convert a user entered date or time (these preferably would be seperate options) that return a discord timestamp.

[darrenfoley]

This would be a huge help for many discord bot developers

[rloxyr]

Description

it would be nice to allow users to specify a Date or time delta. Discord already has a date picker (though possibly not a date & time picker) would be fantastic if we could use that.

Why This is Needed

Lots of commands schedule things it'd be very useful for those. For example I have a command to create events for a specific date. Right now users have to type out the time zone, which is super unfriendly.

Alternatives Considered

Right now we can allow for strings, which is decent but puts the burden of specifying a time zone and correct formatting on the user
Eg users will have to supply January 19, 20:00 EST or similar.

We can use NLP techniques for time deltas so that's less important
Eg parsing in 5 minutes is pretty easy with an off the shelf npm library and doesn't require a time zone.

Additional Details

A way of displaying dates in a user's timezone would also be a fantastic pairing. Embed footers at the moment are significantly lacking as they only display the date instead of date + time.

If I want to schedule say a movie night or something and I put the date in text I have to specify a time zone and users have to convert it themselves... If I put it in the embed footers users don't get told the time until the day of... which is less than ideal.

The format used in the footer is also less than ideal being simply day/month/year which has some ambiguity among locations (maybe it's localized I'm not sure, but either way I've heard users having trouble trusting it) Would be nice to have a more full date format.

[frankie4073]

Definitely love this idea

[redbaron2k7]

Bump, I really would love to see this as a feature using a date picker as input, so many ways this could be used.

[spiritualnulll]

Bumping yet again. Really needed!

[lajawi]

This should absolutely be added. I'm now currently writing my very first bot, and one of the commands needs not only one, but two date + time inputs, as it's for planning an event. The way I will most likely do it, is by asking each input seperately (year, month, day, hour, and minute, all twice).

[brensch]

Currently have to make users type out a date string for start and finish, this is the main sticking point when people try to use my bot. A date and date range picker would be excellent.