Also don’t be fooled by toISOString which is the same as toUTCString but outputs the ISO 8601 format (its name should be toUTCISOString). To sum up, toString shows the date using your local time zone while toUTCString is based on UTC. Still, it’s not true if you choose another time zone. Yes, the zero timestamp is T00:00:00 at UTC for everyone around the globe. I’m sure you’ll get the same result as I did: You didn’t get the “right” date before because JavaScript uses your local time zone to show the most accurate date/time to you. It's considered on UTC because it doesn’t include any offset or time zone. Rule #1 : Timestamps are only for saving, not for displaying. Ok, I cheated a bit to get this result… I should get Thu 01:00 GMT+0100 because my computer time zone is set to Europe/Paris.Īctually, this moment with a zero timestamp is midnight in Greenwich, but also 05:45 in Mumbai and even T16:30 in San Francisco when you consider their time zone’s offset. To make sure you understood, run the previous snippet in your browser. Great, let’s choose an epoch then! Actually, the common epoch has already been set and its value is Janu(midnight UTC). It’s the number of milliseconds elapsed from a pre-defined date (or epoch) to the specified date. In order to work with dates more easily, we can represent dates as numbers. This means that +1 is not equal to and can’t be handled. T12:51:43+0730 How computers handle datesĬomputers are only able to perform operations using numbers. Novemat 12:51:43 AM (in a time zone at UTC +07:30) Fortunately, the ISO 8601 specification sets a common rule for date formatting. One last thing: there are plenty of ways to write a date. For more details on each database and their differences, check out this article. For example, try to not mix up Arab, Arabic and Arabian Standard Time. The Microsoft database isn't updated often, it contains less history, fairly curious time zone names (eg: Romantic Standard Time) and is error prone. But this can cause issues when running cross-platform. Besides, Microsoft maintains its own Microsoft Time Zone Database used on its operating systems. You end up with a string such as Europe/Paris following the Area/City pattern. The most common way to figure out a time zone is by using the IANA Time Zone Database. Then, the clock is reset to the time zone time in winter. DST or summer time adds one hour to the time zone offset before summer. In addition of this offset, which comes with the time zone, some countries also shift clocks twice a year. Yet, the shift isn’t only in whole hours: Nepal's offset is +0545. You may also heard about GMT which is a time zone without any offset.įor instance, when it’s 10:50 at UTC, it’s also 03:50 in San Francisco with a -0700 offset and 18:50 in Beijing with a +0800 offset. Global time is called UTC, it stands for Coordinated Universal Time. Standard world time zones - Illustration by Hellerick from Wikimedia Commons This offset is a number of minutes to add to the global time to get your time zone time. As a result, the globe gets split into time zones and each gets an offset. To make sure the time is coordinated with the sun for everyone, it’s necessary to shift from global time according to your location. If everyone used global time, let’s say 09:00 would be sunrise in Japan, but for Americans it would be sunset. Quick introduction to time zonesĪs the earth is kind of a sphere, the sun is rising in Japan while it's setting in America. In this article, I’ll introduce time zone issues and share some rules to follow. This was an opportunity for me to learn how to correctly handle dates and times for international software. Here is the unit test working in France but not in Morocco There were some unit tests making assertions about dates that used to work at my office in France but weren't working in Morocco for new members on our team. I recently came across an issue involving timezones. Unless you live in a country which has to deal with multiple time zones, such as the United States or Russia. When you develop some software you may not think about timezones at first.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |