How to extract year, month, and day from datetime string in Zapier JavaScript

[Noah_Fire]

I’m working on a Zapier automation and need to break down a datetime string into separate components. I want to extract just the year, month, and day parts and ignore the time portion.

My input looks like this:
timestamp: 2020-05-15 14:22:45

Here’s the code I wrote:

let { timestamp } = inputData;
let { datepart } = timestamp.split(' ')[0];
const parts = datepart.split("-");
const yr = parts[0];
const mn = parts[1];
const dy = parts[2];
output = [{yr, mn, dy}];

But I keep getting this error message:
“We had trouble sending your test through. TypeError: Cannot read property ‘split’ of undefined”

What am I doing wrong here? The datetime string format should be correct but something isn’t working as expected.

[Claire29]

hey, your destructuring is wrong. change let { datepart } = timestamp.split(' ')[0]; to let datepart = timestamp.split(' ')[0];. drop the curly braces - you’re just dealing with a string.

[SilentSailing34]

Yeah, the destructuring issue’s covered above, but there’s another problem - you’re not checking if the timestamp actually exists in inputData. I hit this exact error working with webhook data in Zapier. Sometimes the input field comes through as null or undefined, especially during testing. Add a simple check first:

let { timestamp } = inputData;
if (!timestamp) {
    return [{yr: '', mn: '', dy: ''}];
}
let datepart = timestamp.split(' ')[0];
const parts = datepart.split("-");
const yr = parts[0];
const mn = parts[1];
const dy = parts[2];
output = [{yr, mn, dy}];

This saved me hours of debugging when my Zapier workflows would randomly fail on empty data.

[alexlee]

Your destructuring syntax on line 2 is wrong. You’re trying to destructure a string like it’s an object. Just assign the result directly to a variable - no curly braces needed. Also, add some error handling since Zapier sometimes sends weird data formats. Here’s the fix I’ve used in my own Zapier workflows:

let { timestamp } = inputData;
let datepart = timestamp.split(' ')[0];
const parts = datepart.split("-");
const yr = parts[0];
const mn = parts[1];
const dy = parts[2];
output = [{yr, mn, dy}];

This’ll fix your TypeError and extract the date components properly.