Working with Numbers, Dates, and Strings

Groovy makes it easy to work with numbers, dates and strings. The expression for a literal number is just the number itself:

// Default discount is 5%
def defaultDiscount = 0.05
// Assume 31 days in a month
def daysInMonth = 31

To create a literal date, use the date() or dateTime() function:

// Start by considering January 31st, 2019
def lastDayOfJan = date(2019,1,31)
// Tax forms are late after 15-APR-2019 23:59:59
def taxSubmissionDeadline = dateTime(2019,4,15,23,59,59)

Write a literal string using a matching pair of single quotes, as shown here.

// Direct users to the Acme support twitter account
def supportTwitterHandle = '@acmesupport'

It is fine if the string value contains double-quotes, as in:

// Default podcast signoff
def salutation = 'As we always say, "Animate from the heart."'

However, if your string value contains single quotes, then use a matching pair of double-quotes to surround the value like this:

// Find only gold customers with credit score over 750
customers.appendViewCriteria("status = 'Gold' and creditScore > 750")

You can use the normal + and - operators to do date, number, and string arithmetic like this:

// Assign a date three days after the CreatedDate
def targetDate = CreatedDate + 3

// Assign a date one week (seven days) before the value
// of the SubmittedDate field
def earliestAcceptedDate = SubmittedDate - 7

// Increase an employee's Salary field value by 100 dollars
Salary = Salary + 100

// Decrement an salesman's commission field value by 100 dollars
Commission = Commission - 100

// Subtract (i.e. remove) any "@"-sign that might be present
// in the contact's twitter name
def twitNameWithoutAtSign = ContactTwitterName - '@'

// Add the value of the twitter name to the message
def message = 'Follow this user on Twitter at @' + twitNameWithoutAtSign