duration

FEEL built-in function · FEEL date and time functions

duration(from)

Creates a days-and-time or years-and-months duration from an ISO 8601 string.

FEEL has two duration types that do not mix. Days-and-time durations (P3D, PT2H) are exact amounts of time. Years-and-months durations (P1Y, P6M) are calendar amounts whose length depends on the month. Comparing one with the other gives null, because a month is not a fixed number of days.

Durations are normalized: PT90M becomes PT1H30M and P14M becomes P1Y2M. Weeks (P2W) are not part of the notation. The components are available as .days, .hours, .minutes, .seconds, .years and .months.

Parameters

Parameter	Type	Description
from	string	ISO 8601 duration, e.g. P3D, PT2H30M or P1Y6M

Examples

duration("P3DT4H")

P3DT4H Try it ↑

duration("P1Y6M")

P1Y6M Try it ↑

date("2026-07-01") + duration("P3D")

2026-07-04 Try it ↑

Edge cases and null handling

duration("PT90M")

PT1H30M Try it ↑

Normalized.

duration("P14M")

P1Y2M Try it ↑

Months carry over into years.

duration("-P3D")

-P3D Try it ↑

The sign goes in front of the P.

duration("P2W")

null Try it ↑

Weeks are not accepted; write P14D. B-FEEL returns PT0S.

duration("P1D") = duration("PT24H")

true Try it ↑

duration("P1Y") = duration("P12M")

true Try it ↑

duration("P1M") = duration("P30D")

null Try it ↑

The two duration types cannot be compared.

duration("PT1H") / duration("PT15M")

4 Try it ↑

Dividing durations gives a number.

duration("PT2H") * 3

PT6H Try it ↑

duration("3 days")

null Try it ↑

Only the XML Schema duration notation is accepted.

date("2026-07-24") + duration("P" + string(5) + "D")

2026-07-29 Try it ↑

Build a duration from a number by concatenating the ISO string.

Part of FEEL date and time functions: date arithmetic, the two kinds of duration, time zones, and every temporal function side by side.

Related functions

years and months duration · date and time

Defined by the OMG DMN 1.6 specification, chapter 10.3.4 (built-in functions).