Find the Earliest Date Across Multiple Date Fields

When a record has multiple date fields, sometimes you’d like to know which date is the earliest.

In the below example, each record is a social post that has different live dates for different channels. I’d like to know the earliest live date across all three channels. I could do this in a formula, but the ‘LIVE DATE’ field is also used by other teams, so I’d rather calculate the date with the below script (plus the awesome batchAnd script to do this for more than 50 records):

Example Base Here

1 // 🌸🌸 👇Add all the date fields you need here 👇 🌸🌸
2let fields = ['Instagram Date','IG Stories Date','Facebook Date','LIVE DATE']
3
4// Let Airtable know which table and views records you want to use
5let table = base.getTable("Content");
6let view = table.getView('All');
7let query = await view.selectRecordsAsync({fields:fields});
8let records = query.records;
9
10// Find the Earliest Date
11let dates = records.map( c => fields.map( x => (c.getCellValue(x) != null && x != 'LIVE DATE') ? Date.parse(c.getCellValue(x)) : null).filter(x => x));
12let minRaw = dates.map( c => c.reduce((acc,cur) => Math.min(acc,cur)));
13let min = minRaw.map( c => new Date(c).toISOString())
14let update = min.map( (c,i) => ({id:records[i].id,fields:{
15    'LIVE DATE': c
16}}));
17
18/*
19    Use this function to perform 'Update', 'Create', or 'Delete'
20    async actions on batches of records that could potentially 
21    more than 50 records.
22
23    ::PARAMETERS::
24    action = string; one of 3 values:
25           - 'Update' to call table.updateRecordsAsync()
26           - 'Create' to call table.createRecordsAsync()
27           - 'Delete' to call table.deleteRecordsAsync()
28
29    table = Table; the table the action will be performed in
30
31    records = Array; the records to perform the action on
32            - Ensure the record objects inside the array are
33            formatted properly for the action you wish to
34            perform
35
36    ::RETURNS::
37    recordsActedOn = integer, array of recordId's, or null; 
38                   - Update Success: integer; the number of records processed by the function
39                   - Delete Success: integer; the number of records processed by the function
40                   - Create Success: array; the id strings of records created by the function
41                   - Failure: null;
42*/
43async function batchAnd(action, table, records) {
44    let recordsActedOn;
45
46    switch (action) {
47        case 'Update':
48            recordsActedOn = records.length;
49            while (records.length > 0) {
50                await table.updateRecordsAsync(records.slice(0, 50));
51                records = records.slice(50);
52            };
53            break;
54        
55        case 'Create':
56            recordsActedOn = [];
57            while (records.length > 0) {
58                let recordIds = await table.createRecordsAsync(records.slice(0, 50));
59                recordsActedOn.push(...recordIds)
60                records = records.slice(50);
61            };
62            break;
63
64        case 'Delete':
65            recordsActedOn = records.length;
66            while (records.length > 0) {
67                await table.deleteRecordsAsync(records.slice(0, 50));
68                records = records.slice(50);
69            }
70            break;
71
72        default:
73            output.markdown(`**Please use either 'Update', 'Create', or 'Delete' as the "action" parameter for the "batchAnd()" function.**`);
74            recordsActedOn = null;
75    }
76    return recordsActedOn;
77}
78
79
80// Update the records
81await batchAnd('Update',table,update)