How to get current date and time in Yahoo Pipes?

Question

Is there a way to get current date and time in Yahoo Pipes?

I need this to create a pipe with only the newest questions from SO as I don't want to wait for SO team to implement RSS for this...

Answer 1

The Date Builder module converts a text string into a datetime value. You can pick a date using the handy built-in calendar widget, enter a text string into the module's entry field, or wire a string into it from another module, like the Text Input module.

Date Builder understands all the date formats as Date Input, formats like "tomorrow" and "3 days ago", as well as "07/04/2007" and "16:32 EST".

This module is useful when you need to extract items from a feed by date. In this example, we'll use the U.S. CERT computer security Atom feed. This feed provides information on computer vulnerabilities reported in the last few months.
In our example, we want to return only very recent items, problems reported in the last five days.

Source: Yahoo! Pipes Module Reference: Date Modules

Answer 2

For what you want to do, using the DateBuilder module with syntax like '-24 hours' would probably be best.

I've created a demo pipe that fetches stories from Slashdot from the last 24 hours as an example. For some more info about the various kinds of syntax supported, see here.

Answer 3

You can also use the DateBuilder with a string of "today" - to get the current date/time or "today 12:00 UTC" to just a date with no time