Create Enumerated Function Parameter Type

Question

I want to create a function similar to DATEDIFF in MS SQL Server 2008 R2. The first parameter in DATEDIFF is a datepart. Can I use datepart as a parameter in my function? If not, how do I create a parameter similar to datepart? I don't want to make the parameter text.

For example, I would like to have a function like this: MYFUNC(datepart, timestart, timeend)

So when I call the function, it would look like this: MYFUNC(Hour, N'08:00:00', N'12:00:00')

I'm currently using a nvarchar for the datepart param so my function looks like this: MYFUNC(N'Hour', N'08:00:00', N'12:00:00')

Answer 1

You can't do what Microsoft does with built-ins, sorry. You will need to write your function to accept a string, for example, and evaluate it inline, e.g.

CREATE FUNCTION dbo.CustomDateDiff
(
  @datepart VARCHAR(32), -- does not need to be NVARCHAR
  @start    DATETIME,
  @end      DATETIME
)
RETURNS INT
AS
BEGIN
    RETURN (SELECT CASE @datepart 
      WHEN 'HOUR'   THEN DATEDIFF(HOUR,   @start, @end) 
      WHEN 'MINUTE' THEN DATEDIFF(MINUTE, @start, @end)
      WHEN 'WEEK'   THEN DATEDIFF(WEEK,   @start, @end)
      ELSE               DATEDIFF(DAY,    @start, @end)
    END);
END
GO

Not that you can't use a conditional inside DATEDIFF - a lot of people think you could say:

DATEDIFF(@datepart, 

Or

DATEDIFF(CASE WHEN @datepart = 'HOUR' THEN HOUR END,

But neither of these will work - both yield:

Msg 1023, Level 15, State 1, Line 2
Invalid parameter 1 specified for datediff.