How to dynamically define quarterly dates in Coldfusion

You know those reports that upper management request from time to time? The ones that give you nightmares? Yeah those. Well sometimes they will request quarterly reports so I wanted to share an easy way to define quarterly dates.

So we start with our default variables:

<cfset quarter = 1>
<cfset year = "#year(now())#">
<cfset startmonth = 1>

And here are the functions that create the dates:

<cffunction name="QuarterFirstDate" returnType="date">
    <cfargument name="quarternumber" required="yes" type="numeric">
    <cfargument name="yr" type="numeric" default="#year(now())#">
    <cfargument name="startmonth" type="numeric" default="1">
    <cfset firstDate = DateAdd("m",startmonth-1,CreateDate(yr, ((quarternumber-1)*3)+1, "1"))>
    <cfreturn firstDate>
</cffunction>

<cffunction name="QuarterLastDate" returnType="date">
    <cfargument name="quarternumber" required="yes" type="numeric">
    <cfargument name="yr" type="numeric"  default="#year(now())#">
    <cfargument name="startmonth" type="numeric" default="1">
    <cfset lastDate = DateAdd("m",startmonth-1,CreateDate(yr, quarternumber*3, DaysInMonth(CreateDate(yr, quarternumber*3, "1"))))>
    <cfreturn lastDate>
</cffunction>


And here is how I define my returned variables to be used in my code:

<cfset startDate = #DateFormat(QuarterFirstDate(quarter, year, startmonth))#>
<cfset endDate = #DateFormat(QuarterLastDate(quarter, year, startmonth))#>

To change the quarters, simply change the default quarter variable define at the top of the page:

<cfset quarter = 1> = 01-Jan-14 - 31-Mar-14
<cfset quarter = 2>  = 01-Apr-14 - 30-Jun-14
<cfset quarter = 3>  = 01-Jul-14 - 30-Sep-14
<cfset quarter = 4>  01-Oct-14 - 31-Dec-14


nJoy!