Cypher Sleuthing: Dealing with Dates, Part 5 – APOC

This post from Neo4j's developer relations engineer discusses the various temporal functions available in APOC, a library for extended Cypher functionality. The author reviews each function, comparing it to its equivalent in Cypher and explaining when to use each. Key points include: APOC's `apoc.date.*` functions can be replaced by Cypher's built-in temporal functions in some cases, but are still valuable for dealing with epoch time and strings; the `apoc.date.parse()` function is simpler than its equivalent in Cypher for converting a string to a specific time unit; the `apoc.date.parseAsZonedDateTime()` function returns an ISO8601 temporal value, whereas Cypher's temporal instants do not account for timezone offsets; APOC's `apoc.temporal.*` functions are used to format temporal values into strings in different formats, which is not possible with Cypher. The author concludes that while some APOC functions can be replaced by Cypher's built-in functionality, others remain valuable and should be used when necessary.