I realised that there could be a use-case for picking up the Date/Time format string from a column, thereby enabling the workflow to specify a date/time format applicable to a single row, rather than having the same format for ALL rows in a dataset.
This could be particularly useful for data cleansing purposes, where a variety of known date/time formats had been entered. As it stands, applying different formats to each row using String to Date&Time can only be performed within a loop, where the value of the flow variable representing the format could be modified for each row.
If it were possible to alternatively pick up the format value from a String column
data cleansing using the String to Date&Time node could be much faster on large data sets. This could also be applied to the Date&Time to String node, if for example different extract formats were required on a row-by-row basis because maybe different rows were to feed a variety of other systems.
@takbb a nice solution above with the mix of date formats. Concerning the feature suggested you could do that with a loop obviously today.
Question is would such a standard feature bring more confusion because it would only apply in case someone is sloppy enough to have mixed all the formats but took care to accurately set the patterns ā¦ Maybe in that case a loop or regex solution might be enough
today.