In the AdSense Management API and AdSense Host API, you can let us manage date calculations for you. Apart from the standard YYYY-MM-DD format, all date fields accept the following special keywords:

• today
• startOfMonth
• startOfYear

With these keywords you can define useful date ranges such as the following:

	Start date	End date
This month’s performance so far	startOfMonth	today
This year’s performance so far	startOfYear	today

But here is the really useful part: there is a handy feature that you can use to calculate relative dates by adding or subtracting days, weeks, months, or years:

	Start date	End date
Last 7 days’ performance	today-6d	today
Last month’s performance	startOfMonth-1m	startOfMonth-1d
Previous six months	startOfMonth-6m	startOfMonth-1d

You can use up to two operations per date. Let’s say we need to compare last month with the same period last year. We would need two requests like these two requests with these start and end dates:

	Start date	End date
Last month’s performance	startOfMonth-1m	startOfMonth-1d
Same month last year	startOfMonth-1m-1y	startOfMonth-1d-1y

If you want to try these out, we recommend using the APIs explorer. You’ll find it at the bottom of each method documentation page:

• generate method for Reports on AdSense Management API v1.2
• generate method for Reports on AdSense Host API v4.1

If you have any questions about this post or the AdSense APIs in general, visit the AdSense API Forum. You can also follow our Google Ads Developers G+ page for ad-related updates.

 - Jose Alcérreca, AdSense API Team

We’re happy to announce the release of v4.1 of the AdSense Host API. Don’t let the numbering fool you, this is a major update that provides a ton of new functionality!

The new version is intended as a full replacement of AdSense Host API v3 for ContentAds hosts, with a few extra features. Changes from v4 include added support for:

• Account creation and association with a new publisher signup flow
• Managing URL and custom channels on the host
• Retrieving publisher ad clients
• Creating and managing new publisher ad units, and retrieving ad code for them
• Running publisher-side reports

With this new release, we're also announcing the sunset of version 3 of the Host API, to take place on January 1, 2013. Over the next few weeks, we will be getting in touch with existing hosts and helping them get started with the migration.

If you’re not an AdSense host yet and are interested in joining the program, take a look at our introduction page to find out more about the requirements and how it works.

Let us know if you have any questions!

 - Sérgio Gomes, on behalf of the AdSense API Team