Today and future data-task-due are messy [date-based CSS errors for non-UTC timezones]

[Hexara7777]

Please check that this issue hasn't been reported before.

• I searched previous Bug Reports didn't find any similar reports.

Expected Behavior

Today should translate to Today only and not tomorrow as well
All future dates should translate to the exact date not shifted

Current behaviour

Those are from the days remaining CSS snippet: #2232
As for the timezone its GMT +3, shal

If today's date is 26th, using the following:

.contains-task-list .task-due[data-task-due="today"]::after { content: "today" }

Will mark both 26th and 27th as today while it's supposed to mark only "Today".

.contains-task-list .task-due[data-task-due="future-1d"]::after { content: "tomorrow" }

Will mark 28th as tomorrow while it's supposed to mark 27th as "Tomorrow" instead.

.contains-task-list .task-due[data-task-due="future-2d"]::after { content: "in 2 days" }

Will mark 29th as in 2 days although 2 days from 26th is 28th.

And so one for all future dates, all shifted by 1 day. While all past ones works right with no problems.

So, is this some kind of bug? How to fix this?

Steps to reproduce

Idk how to

Maintainers note: See #2785 (comment) for steps to reproduce.

Which Operating Systems are you using?

• Android
• iPhone/iPad
• Linux
• macOS
• Windows

Obsidian Version

1.5.12

Tasks Plugin Version

7.0.0

Checks

• I have tried it with all other plugins disabled and the error still occurs

Possible solution

Idk

[claremacrae]

Thanks for using Tasks.

There is content in your screenshots that is not provided as text for me to copy, so for reasons explained in the following post, I am unable to investigate:

https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Support+and+Help/Report+a+Bug

If you can provide full text, and full numbered steps for a reproduction, as per the above, I will willingly have a look when I have time.

Thank you.

[Hexara7777]

It's not content, it's a tasks query using the following code:

Today + Past

sort by due
not done
show task count
has due date
due in or before today
hide task count
description does not include ?
path does not include Skills
status.type is not NON_TASK

Tomorrow

sort by due
not done
show task count
has due date
due in tomorrow
hide task count
description does not include ?
path does not include Skills
status.type is not NON_TASK

Next 7 days

sort by due
not done
show task count
has due date
due in or before next 7 days
due after tomorrow
hide task count
description does not include ?
path does not include Skills
status.type is not NON_TASK

1. Create a query
2. Create a CSS snippet that uses that past, today and future thing, Idk what it's called
   For example this one: Due date styles ✨ #2232
   Or this one: https://publish.obsidian.md/tasks/Advanced/Styling#Colors+for+Due+Today+and+Overdue
3. You will find that the rendered dates follow the same behavior I described on the first post.

[claremacrae]

Thanks, but I was very clear in #2784 (comment) that I need the task lines in markdown format too.

[Hexara7777]

I see, sorry that's not what I understood the first time, here they are:

- [ ] 0 📅 2024-04-25
- [ ] 1 📅 2024-04-26
- [ ] 2 📅 2024-04-27
- [ ] 3 📅 2024-04-28 
- [ ] 4 📅 2024-04-29 
- [ ] 5 📅 2024-04-30 
- [ ] 6 📅 2024-05-01
- [ ] 7 📅 2024-05-02
- [ ] 8 📅 2024-05-03
- [ ] 9 📅 2024-05-04

This is the result when I have the current time of 1 AM 27th april as of taking this screenshot:

And if I manually set my time to 8 PM 26th april (for testing purposes), this is the result:

It looks like the first task has a past due date and it works fine, for the others, no difference. And 2 consecutive days count as today.

[claremacrae]

Thank you.

[Hexara7777]

Thank you.

You're more than welcome, I have added an image as well. And sorry for earlier misunderstanding.

[claremacrae]

I've tried out what you have supplied, and it gives me very different results from the screenshots that you have posted.

---

Using the data supplied

These were the steps that I followed. Please note how they are unambiguous, minimal and specific...

1. Create a new, empty folder
2. Open that folder as a new vault in Obsidian
3. Turn on community plugins
4. Install and enable the Tasks plugin
5. Create a new snippet file .obsidian/snippets/due-date.css
6. Add the following content to that snippet file

.contains-task-list .task-due[data-task-due="today"]::after { content: "today" }
.contains-task-list .task-due[data-task-due="future-1d"]::after { content: "tomorrow" }
.contains-task-list .task-due[data-task-due="future-2d"]::after { content: "in 2 days" }

7. Enable the snippet file in Appearance settings
8. Set the Base colour scheme to Dark
9. Create a file called Tasks
10. Shift+Paste the following content in to that note:

- [ ] 0 📅 2024-04-25
- [ ] 1 📅 2024-04-26
- [ ] 2 📅 2024-04-27
- [ ] 3 📅 2024-04-28 
- [ ] 4 📅 2024-04-29 
- [ ] 5 📅 2024-04-30 
- [ ] 6 📅 2024-05-01
- [ ] 7 📅 2024-05-02
- [ ] 8 📅 2024-05-03
- [ ] 9 📅 2024-05-04

## Query

```tasks
```

11. View the Tasks note in Source mode, Live Preview, and Reading mode, side-by-side

The time is 02:33 on 27th April, and the result is clearly correct:

[claremacrae]

@Hexara7777 Please follow the numbered steps in my reproduction above, and paste the result in here.

Thanks.

[Hexara7777]

I didn't know that you needed the whole process in such fine details, my apologizes.

I followed your exact steps and here are the results @ 4:56 AM 4/27/2024 GMT+3

You can see both 26th and 27th appear as "Today". 26th should be "Yesterday".

[claremacrae]

Good. Thank you very much.

[Hexara7777]

You're more than welcome! Do you need any logs or something?

[claremacrae]

No, now it is added to my very long list of things to look at, when I have time.

[claremacrae]

Actually, it would be good to see if the result changes nearer to midday, your time.

Without changing the clock on your PC, could you reopen the test vault at around 11am and again around 1pm, and record the results?

You should close the 3 tabs and reopen them each time, to ensure the results are re-rendered.

And of course paste the result here.

Thanks in advance.

[Hexara7777]

I will be out until about 4 PM, can this be a problem? I believe what you're asking about kinda happened around 8 PM yesterday (when I first asked you about this bug).

At around 8-10 PM on 26th April, it showed like that (problem with future dates):
24th -> 2 days ago
25th -> Yesterday
26th -> Today
27th -> Today
28th -> 1 day

At around 2-5 AM on 27th April, it showed like that (problem with past dates):
25th -> 1 day ago
26th -> Today
27th -> Today
28th -> Tomorrow
29th -> 1 day

I think (just a guess) this whole problem is due to the plugin being dealing with hours since/until past/future days rather than using midnight as the point of truth for which day it's now and what days of past/future are.

UPDATE: For some reason, dates now @ 5:56 AM on 4/27/2024 GMT+3 are only messy for yesterday and not all of the past dates:
25th -> 2 day ago
26th -> Today
27th -> Today
28th -> Tomorrow
29th -> 1 day

[claremacrae]

Yes that’s why I am asking. So far, all the times you’ve quoted are within maybe 4 or 5 hours of your midnight.

I want to know what behaviour you see much closer to your midday.

Also, your changing the clock on your PC introduces another variable or unknown, so I am ignoring any observations made with the clock changed.

Which is why I am asking to know the behaviour close to your actual midday without the clock being changed on your PC.

It’s not a problem your being out today.

Just add the info next time you’re at your PC either side of your midday.

[claremacrae]

UPDATE: For some reason, dates now @ 5:56 AM on 4/27/2024 GMT+3 are only messy for yesterday and not all of the past dates

A couple of things:

1. I only spotted this UPDATE by luck. GitHub emails me about new comments, but not about any edits to existing ones. So it's best to add new info in new comments, instead of editing existing ones.
2. Had you closed and re-opened all the tabs containing the note before this 5:56 AM observation? Note my recent comment:

You should close the 3 tabs and reopen them each time, to ensure the results are re-rendered.

[claremacrae]

The relevant code is below. It's interesting that .startOf('day') is only added to today and not to the date parameter....

obsidian-tasks/src/Renderer/TaskFieldRenderer.ts

Lines 61 to 85 in 21285ea

	function dateToAttribute(date: Moment) {
	const today = window.moment().startOf('day');
	const diffDays = today.diff(date, 'days');
	if (isNaN(diffDays)) {
	return null;
	}
	if (diffDays === 0) {
	return 'today';
	}
	let result = '';
	if (diffDays > 0) {
	result += 'past-';
	} else if (diffDays < 0) {
	result += 'future-';
	}
	if (Math.abs(diffDays) <= MAX_DAY_VALUE_RANGE) {
	result += Math.abs(diffDays).toString() + 'd';
	} else {
	result += DAY_VALUE_OVER_RANGE_POSTFIX;
	}
	return result;
	}

[claremacrae]

@Hexara7777 - it's OK, you don't need to do any more tests, thanks. I can reproduce the problem in unit tests.

[claremacrae]

This edit makes some of the existing tests of data-task-due and related values fail.

Index: tests/global-setup.js
===================================================================
diff --git a/tests/global-setup.js b/tests/global-setup.js
--- a/tests/global-setup.js	(revision 21285ea922eb6fb26b9a971504baa72e825217c6)
+++ b/tests/global-setup.js	(date 1714199793280)
@@ -1,3 +1,3 @@
 module.exports = async () => {
-    process.env.TZ = 'UTC';
+    process.env.TZ = 'America/New_York';
 };

For example, this:

data-task-start="past-3d"

becomes this:

data-task-start="past-2d"

[claremacrae]

This diff unfortunately did not restore the original behaviour when in 'America/New_York':

Index: src/Renderer/TaskFieldRenderer.ts
===================================================================
diff --git a/src/Renderer/TaskFieldRenderer.ts b/src/Renderer/TaskFieldRenderer.ts
--- a/src/Renderer/TaskFieldRenderer.ts	(revision 21285ea922eb6fb26b9a971504baa72e825217c6)
+++ b/src/Renderer/TaskFieldRenderer.ts	(date 1714201003221)
@@ -60,7 +60,7 @@
 
         function dateToAttribute(date: Moment) {
             const today = window.moment().startOf('day');
-            const diffDays = today.diff(date, 'days');
+            const diffDays = today.diff(date.startOf('day'), 'days');
 
             if (isNaN(diffDays)) {
                 return null;

So there's a lot more exploration needed.

One question to consider is whether the test helper TaskBuilder's handling of timezones on dates is consistent with that of the production code.

[claremacrae]

I've edited the issue description to add the presumed cause.

[claremacrae]

@Hexara7777 Huge thanks for reporting this. I’m so close to UTC/Greenwich Mean Time that I would never have noticed it.

It also reveals a gap in our automated tests that we fix the time zone to UTC, and don’t test in other time zones.

it’s going to take a while to find safe fixes for this, and any related issues we find as a consequence - but it is important to do so.

[Hexara7777]

@claremacrae You're welcome, I'm glad that you catched the problem, take your time, hope you find the proper solution for it 🙏
If you need any further testing just tell me right away.

[claremacrae]

Possible related issue in another plugin (MIT licence):

• {tasks-today} shows tomorrow instead of today thingnotok/obsidian-toggle-list#23

And solution:

• thingnotok/obsidian-toggle-list@633fa82

[Hexara7777]

@claremacrae So, this make its solution easier or sooner to come out? :D

[claremacrae]

@claremacrae So, this make its solution easier or sooner to come out? :D

Only if somebody has time to write failing tests and then work on it...

Not me, I'm currently swamped with too much other Tasks stuff going on....