How to embed date as variable into Google Ads Query Language?

Question

I am using python to execute the query and retrieve the data from Google Ads I am trying to set start and end date as variable and use these in my query.

The query looks like this:

GAquery = """
SELECT
    segments.date,
    segments.device,
    campaign.name,
    metrics.clicks,
    metrics.conversions,
    metrics.conversions_value,
    metrics.cost_micros,
    metrics.impressions
FROM
   campaign WHERE segments.date >= '2021-12-01' AND segments.date <= '2022-02-27'
ORDER BY
    metrics.clicks DESC"""

and it is executed by Google Function for Python

response = ga_service.search_stream(customer_id=customer_id, query=GAquery)

This function does not have element params where i could use %s as placeholder in the query and then call it in params regular execute(sql,conn, params[Sdate,Edate] function in python.

So what i need to do is somehow break the query string, and add the dates in between. Something like this:

sdate = (dt.date.today() - dt.timedelta(days=60))
edate = dt.date.today()

GAquery = """
SELECT
    segments.date,
    segments.device,
    campaign.name,
    metrics.clicks,
    metrics.conversions,
    metrics.conversions_value,
    metrics.cost_micros,
    metrics.impressions
FROM
   campaign WHERE segments.date """ + """>= """+ str(sdate) +""" AND segments.date""" +  """<=""" +str(edate) + """
ORDER BY
    metrics.clicks DESC"""

So basically i am trying to force variables into GAquery by breaking the query apart inserting it and stitching it together.

It is failing because i am not breaking it correctly and not adding it back together correctly.

Any idea how to handle this?

Answer 1

To me it looks as if you're missing the single quotes that are required for a date literal in GAQL. In order to parametrize the query, you could use a formatted string literal (assuming you are using Python 3.6 or newer) and do something like

GAquery = f"""
    SELECT
        ...
    FROM
        ...
    WHERE
        segments.date >= '{str(sdate)}' AND segments.date <= '{str(edate)}'
    ORDER BY
        ...
"""