# truncDate


`truncDate` returns a date value that represents a specified portion of a date. For example, requesting the year portion of the value 2012-09-02T00:00:00.000Z returns 2012-01-01T00:00:00.000Z. Specifying a time-related period for a date that doesn't contain time information returns the initial date value unchanged.

## Syntax


```
truncDate('period', date)
```

## Arguments


 *period*   
The period of the date that you want returned. Valid periods are as follows:  
+ YYYY: This returns the year portion of the date.
+ Q: This returns the date of the first day of the quarter that the date belongs to. 
+ MM: This returns the month portion of the date.
+ DD: This returns the day portion of the date.
+ WK: This returns the week portion of the date. The week starts on Sunday in Amazon Quick.
+ HH: This returns the hour portion of the date.
+ MI: This returns the minute portion of the date.
+ SS: This returns the second portion of the date.
+ MS: This returns the millisecond portion of the date.

 *date*   
A date field or a call to another function that outputs a date.

## Return type


Date

## Example


The following example returns a date representing the month of the order date.

```
truncDate('MM', orderDate)
```

The following are the given field values.

```
orderDate      
=========
2012-12-14T00:00:00.000Z  
2013-12-29T00:00:00.000Z
2012-11-15T00:00:00.000Z
```

For these field values, the following values are returned.

```
2012-12-01T00:00:00.000Z
2013-12-01T00:00:00.000Z
2012-11-01T00:00:00.000Z
```