Qliksense Date Comparison Error - qliksense

Question

I'm trying to check if one date is greater than another. This is the formula I'm using:
=if(
Date(PYMT_DT, 'MM/dd/yyyy') >= Date($(Var_StartDate), 'MM/dd/yyyy')
AND
Date(PYMT_DT, 'MM/dd/yyyy') <= Date($(Var_EndDate), 'MM/dd/yyyy')
,1,0)
PYMT_DT is a field from my query. Var_StartDate and Var_EndDate are variables.
The formula always returns 0. However, it works correctly if I type a date directly into the formula.
Let's use these values for an example:
PYMT_DT = 10/21/2016
Var_StartDate = 10/20/2016
Var_EndDate = 10/30/2016
That should give me a 1, but I get a 0 instead. However, if I replace PYMT_DT with the actual date value I get the correct result:
=if(
Date('10/21/2016', 'MM/dd/yyyy') >= Date($(Var_StartDate), 'MM/dd/yyyy')
AND
Date('10/21/2016', 'MM/dd/yyyy') <= Date($(Var_EndDate), 'MM/dd/yyyy')
,1,0)
What am I doing wrong here?

Answer 1

First point is the format, it need to be uppercase 'MM/DD/YYYY'. The second point is that you need Date# function to convert text to date (Date only changes the format of a date or a number). The Third point is that your variable needs to be wrapped with '$(variable)' be be interpreted the value of the variable as a value, not as as variable.
For the variables, would recommend creating already as a date using MakeDate.
The code below you can paste and run
LET Var_StartDate = MakeDate(2016, 10, 20);
LET Var_EndDate = MakeDate(2016, 10, 30);
DATA:
LOAD
PYMT_DT,
if(Date#(PYMT_DT, 'MM/DD/YYYY') >= '$(Var_StartDate)' AND Date#(PYMT_DT, 'MM/DD/YYYY') <= '$(Var_EndDate)', 1, 0) as test
Inline [
PYMT_DT
10/19/2016
10/21/2016
11/01/2016];

Answer 2

If there's a chance your dates have a time component, you also need to make sure you floor() them for comparison otherwise it could be the time that's the issue. As well as using the right formatting etc this might lead to:
=if(
floor(Date#(PYMT_DT, 'MM/DD/YYYY')) >= floor(Date#('$(Var_StartDate)', 'MM/DD/YYYY'))
AND
floor(Date#(PYMT_DT, 'MM/DD/YYYY')) <= floor(Date#('$(Var_EndDate)', 'MM/DD/YYYY'))
,1,0)