I'm confused about the DateTime field type in Web SQL (SQLite?).
Should I store my date/time values as a getTime() in milliseconds, or as a YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS:SSS string?
And if storing in milliseconds, what field type should I use?
In general, I'd use the ISO 8601 format and a text column to hold them. SQLite doesn't have any native time types but its native date and time handling functions work with ISO 8601 formats:
All five date and time functions take a time string as an argument. The time string is followed by zero or more modifiers. The strftime() function also takes a format string as its first argument.
The date and time functions use a subset of IS0-8601 date and time formats. The date() function returns the date in this format: YYYY-MM-DD. The time() function returns the time as HH:MM:SS. The datetime() function returns "YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS".
So if you're ever going to need to manipulate your timestamps inside the database (and you probably will sooner or later) then you'll want to use YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS strings.
If you won't be manipulating your timestamps inside the database (beyond simple comparisons) then you can probably use a seconds-since-epoch integer without difficulty. Also note that sometimes you can use a seconds-since-epoch value natively:
The "unixepoch" modifier (11) only works if it immediately follows a timestring in the DDDDDDDDDD format. This modifier causes the DDDDDDDDDD to be interpreted not as a Julian day number as it normally would be, but as Unix Time - the number of seconds since 1970. If the "unixepoch" modifier does not follow a timestring of the form DDDDDDDDDD which expresses the number of seconds since 1970 or if other modifiers separate the "unixepoch" modifier from prior DDDDDDDDDD then the behavior is undefined. Due to precision limitations imposed by the implementations use of 64-bit integers, the "unixepoch" modifier only works for dates between 0000-01-01 00:00:00 and 5352-11-01 10:52:47 (unix times of -62167219200 through 10675199167).
so you can say:
SELECT datetime(1092941466, 'unixepoch');
and get '2004-08-19 18:51:06' back. Specifying the 'unixepoch' modifier is a bit cumbersome though and causes interesting things to happen when you inevitably forget it:
-- 1333482187 is 2012-04-03 19:43:07
sqlite> select strftime('%m', 1333482187, 'unixepoch');
04
sqlite> select strftime('%m', 1333482187);
43
As usual, the real answer is it depends but ISO 8601 strings are probably your best bet.
Related
An API returns a timestamp as UNIX timestamp at UTC and I would like to know if this timestamp was more than x seconds ago. As expected, this works fine with os.time() - x > timestamp in UTC, but blows up in other timezones.
Unfortunately I can't find a good way solve this in lua.
os.date helpfully has the ! prefix (e.g. os.date("!%H:%M:%S")) to return time at UTC, but it seems that despite the documentation stating it supports all strftime options, this does not support the %s option. I have heard people mention that this is caused by Lua compile time options for a similar issue, but changing these is not possible as the interpreter is provided by the user.
You can use
os.time(os.date("!*t"))
to get the current UNIX epoch.
Ok, so you want the UTC time. Keep in mind that os.time actually knows nothing about timezones, so for example:
os.time(os.date("!*t"))
Will get UTC time and populate table struct.
Will convert table struct according to current timezone to unix timestamp.
So you actually would get your UNIX_TIME - TIMEZONE_OFFSET. If you are in GMT+5 you will get timestamp at UTC-5.
The correct way to do time conversion in lua is:
os.time() -- get current epoch value
os.time{ ... } -- get epoch value for local date/time values
os.date("*t"),os.date("%format") -- get your local date/time
os.date("!*t") or os.date("!%format") -- get UTC date/time
os.date("*t", timestamp),os.date("%format", timestamp) -- get your local date/time for given timestamp
os.date("!*t", timestamp) or os.date("!%format", timestamp) -- get UTC date/time for given timestamp
Kudos to Mons at https://gist.github.com/ichramm/5674287.
If you really need to convert any UTC date to timestamp, there's a good description on how to do this in this question: Convert a string date to a timestamp
os.time() gives you the unix timestamp. The timestamp is seconds since 00:00:00 UTC on 1 January 1970, so it's the same across timezones.
For example, run this code:
print('timestamp', os.time())
print('local hour', os.date("*t").hour)
print('utc hour', os.date("!*t").hour)
Presumably, your local and utc hour are different. Also run it in an online repl. The server's local and utc hour are the same, but both your and the server's timestamp are about the same.
I have a DateTime in my .NET program that I need to print with particular value of time zone offset (for instance, +01:00 always). Output should contain full date time with timezone. It has to be unrelated to system timezone setting. How I could achieve this?
Example: I have a timestamp such as 12-03-2016T12:30:34+03:00 and I need to output it calculated for predefined TZ +1: 12-03-2016T10:30:34+01:00
Found some approach to it.
First of all, DateTime does not have time zone stored in it. Instead it has flag whether it is UTC or Local (without the idea what Local TZ shift is). So: first thing is to get your initial parsing of time from any string time stamp in UTC.
Once it is stored in DateTime object (with Kind=UTC), you have to convert it to the timezone you desire output for. I find examples here useful: datetime to string with time zone.
Note: if you need to convert London daylight-saving time, you have to know right names of timezones in NET so you get it right. See Difference between UTC and GMT Standard Time in .NET
I am working on a SQLite Database which contains a column which stores value in format yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss. Now I need to create a filter to select rows with filter as this datetime column.
Query:
Select * from tbl_locations where datetime >= '2013-09-11 00:00:00' and datetime <='2013-09-13 00:00:00'
Above query is returning null set despite containing values in this slot(which I verified using select statement without filter.)
Any suggestion how can i get the required data set?
Perhaps this excerpt from the SQLite documentation will help you:
1.2 Date and Time Datatype
SQLite does not have a storage class set aside for storing dates and/or times. Instead, the built-in Date And Time Functions of SQLite are capable of storing dates and times as TEXT, REAL, or INTEGER values:
TEXT as ISO8601 strings ("YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.SSS").
REAL as Julian day numbers, the number of days since noon in Greenwich on November 24, 4714 B.C. according to the proleptic Gregorian calendar.
INTEGER as Unix Time, the number of seconds since 1970-01-01 00:00:00 UTC.
Applications can chose to store dates and times in any of these formats and freely convert between formats using the built-in date and time functions.
The date and time functions that you can use in your SQL to build your query are documented at http://www.sqlite.org/lang_datefunc.html
Ok, I tested this out in MySQL but hopefully it will work. I had a table that used timestamps, and changed the column to be of type text. Then I tried the following SQL query and got the same results that I normally would (besides trailing decimals)
SELECT timestamp(stock_quote_timestamp)
FROM stock.stock_quote
WHERE stock_quote_timestamp < timestamp('2013-10-07 11:05:30')##high_date
AND stock_quote_timestamp > timestamp('2013-10-03 14:09:03');##low_date;
So basically, just convert your text statements to timestamps so that they compare correctly. Oh, and you'll also need to state what else you're SELECTing, or you could do a compound select statement: SELECT *, timestamp(stock_quote_timestamp)...
I know this question has been hashed over multiple times and I read lots of posts on that hashing but still am confused.
Using MVC4/WebAPI, I have a datetime that is simply created as new DateTime.Now.
My WebAPI is return data like this:
HttpResponseMessage response = Request.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, new
{
data = sessionRecordSmalls,
count = sessionRecordSmalls.Count,
success = true
});
where sessionRecordsSmall has a public property of DateTime in it.
When I look at the date in the VS debugger, it shows it as now with no timezone of course because DateTime does not include a timezone.
{10/6/2012 9:45:00 AM}
When I look at what gets downloaded from the server, I see in the JSON
2012-10-06T09:45:00
I think the T0 means Timezone 0, not 100% sure of that. My JavaScript library interprets it as timezone 0, then shows the actual date downloaded as GMT (-9 hours ago for me).
My question is, what is the JSON downloaded? Is that include a timezone? Am I missing some important step here?
if serializing with json.net keep in mind that you can specify DateTimeZoneHandling.
Example in WebApiConf.cs
var json = config.Formatters.JsonFormatter;
json.SerializerSettings.DateTimeZoneHandling =Newtonsoft.Json.DateTimeZoneHandling.Local;
The date time 2012-10-06T09:45:00, which we recive in JSON with Web API and default serializer is the ISO 8601 format.
In fact this is so called Combined date and time representations. Extract:
..A single point in time can be represented by concatenating a
complete date expression, the letter T as a delimiter, and a valid
time expression. For example "2007-04-05T14:30"...
There is no time zone information in this format. As mentioned in the Time zone designators Extract:
Time zones in ISO 8601 are represented as local time (with the
location unspecified), as UTC, or as an offset from UTC. If no UTC
relation information is given with a time representation, the time is
assumed to be in local time.
In other words, if there is no offset from UTC specified, it is treated as a local time.
The UTC format would be extended with Z at the end
If the time is in UTC, add a Z directly after the time without a
space. Z is the zone designator for the zero UTC offset. "09:30 UTC"
is therefore represented as "09:30Z" or "0930Z". "14:45:15 UTC" would
be "14:45:15Z" or "144515Z".
UTC time is also known as 'Zulu' time, since 'Zulu' is the NATO phonetic alphabet word for 'Z'.
So, the date-time we recieve is the ISO 8601 format, treated as local time zone (no Z at the end like this 2012-10-06T09:45:00Z)
The following code, d has the current date. Depending on the current locale, it will return a date.
Dim d As Date = Date.Today
Note: I don't want to check whether the date is valid or not, but rather to know, whether it is in a 'dd-MM-yyyy', 'MM-dd-yyyy' or any other date format..
EDIT (29/06/2012 - Friday):
The reason I am asking this question is because I am sick of trying to deal with dates in ASP.NET. I build a project on my local PC, where dates are "dd/MM/yyyy" and as soon as I upload it to the production server (usually in US, hence MM/dd/yyyy) the code breaks.
So I usually deal with dates by converting them into yyyyMMdd format and also keep them in the database like that. That is the closest I get to an exception-free coding.
In this case, it makes sense that there is no way to get the format from a returned date string. Therefore, I will carry on with my approach.
Date.Today is a DateTime, not a string. Thus, it does not have an inherent format.
It will return a Date, which I believe is a VB alias for DateTime. (If it's not, just use DateTime explicitly to be idiomatically .NET rather than using the legacy VB types.)
A DateTime value itself doesn't have a format, any more than an int is in decimal or hex. It's only when you convert the value to a string that a format is applied, and then it depends on how you convert it to a string. You shouldn't use a string conversion until you really need to, and then you should control the format so that it works the way you want it to.
As far as possible, convert text data into its "natural" type as early as possible, and keep it in that type for as long as possible. For example, avoid converting to strings when passing values in SQL queries - instead, use parameterized SQL where you can specify the parameter value as a DateTime.
What you want to know is found in:
CultureInfo.CurrentCulture.DateTimeFormat.ShortDatePattern
This is the format string that will be used when you call
d.ToShortDateString()
You need to be TOLD; there's no other way. Take for example:
6/12/2012
It's valid in dd/mm/yyyy or mm/dd/yyyy format
Which one do you pick if you don't know the locale/format beforehand?
Date values don't have an intrinsic format. In other words, you can format the date to any string representation you need but the opposite conversion from a string back to a Date value requires that you know in which format you are receiving this date string.