DATE AND TIME

Odds, Ends, and Oddities

 About Me
www.maggiepint.com

@maggiepint

maggiepint@gmail.com
https://xkcd.com/15
97/
Like Git:
Date and time is complicated
At first, we avoid learning date and time

But also, like Git:

Date and time makes sense
Date and time can be fun
5 O'clock Somewhere
 PERSPECTIVE
We all see dates and times from different angles
The Global Timeline

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9

Point in absolute
time
Coordinated Universal Time (UTC)
A perspective of the global timeline
Allows us to keep track of absolute time
Primary standard by which the world regulates clocks
Defined precisely by scientific community
Includes leap seconds
Has no relationship to geography
Basically the same as GMT, but GMT is not defined precisely by the
scientific community
Local Time
A local time is a perspective of time
It does not represent a point on the global timeline
It is usually not a contiguous timeline (DST)
UTC Time:
2016-04-09T14:17:47Z
What we know What we dont know

The point in absolute time Whether it is morning or night

Whether this time is before or What day of the week it is
after another point in time
Local Time:
Saturday, April 9, 2016 9:11 AM
We Know We Dont Know

What point this is on the

global timeline
It is Saturday Whether it is before or after a
It is morning time from a different locality
Whatthe time will be if we
add one hour to this time
TIME ZONES
Uniting Perspectives
Time Zone Basics
A time zone is a region that observes a uniform standard time
A time zone is defined by a set of offsets from UTC
Offsets are typically in one hour intervals, but not always
Nepal Standard Time is UTC +5:45
Time zones frequently have multiple offsets
There are two main resources for time zones
Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA)
Windows Time Zones

IANA time zones are more widely used, and more accurate
Time Zone: America/Chicago
Politics
Time zones are inherently political
Governments change time zones regularly
Governments change time zones suddenly
Russia this year is an example of politicians causing time chaos
http://bit.ly/1SB9TvW
Morocco reverts to standard time during Ramadan
Assume nothing
IANA Time Zone Libraries
JavaScript - Moment TimeZone
http://momentjs.com/timezone/
.NET NodaTime
http://nodatime.org/
Java 8 + - java.time (native)
Java 7 - JodaTime
See Stack Overflow post for more exhaustive list
http://bit.ly/1RUYuuM
Time Zones are not Offsets!
"2016-04-09T19:39:00-05:00
This date could be in:
America/Chicago

America/Bahia_Banderas

America/Bogata

America/Cancun

America/Cayman

And more
ASSUMPTIONS
Things we think we know
 Assumption
If you just store everything in UTC,
all your problems will be solved.
A Table With Everything in UTC
 Show me all the messages for
the business day of April 4th.

I have users in London, and across the United States.

In London April 4th is between 2016-04-03 23:00:00Z and 2016-04-04 22:59:59Z

In Minneapolis April 4th is between 2016-04-04 05:00:00Z and 2016-04-05
04:59:59Z
Perspectives
When storing a date, consider the following perspectives
Absolute time
Time local to the dates viewer
Time local to the dates originator
ISO 8601 Format with Offset
2016-04-09T20:18:48-
05:00
Local Date Local Time Offset
 Why use ISO 8601 format?
With offset, reflects both local and absolute
perspective
Has unambiguous ordering
Compare this to 4/10/2016
In the US this is April 10th
In the UK this is October 4th
Helps avoid having to compute local perspective from
absolute during querying
Supported by nearly all modern databases
Databases will automatically order in absolute time
 Assumption
If I just store everything in ISO 8601
with an offset, everything will be
fine.
Future Dates
Time zones change over time
In the future, the offset of a scheduled time could change
Store future dates in local time with a time zone
 Assumption
There are 24 hours in a day, and 365
days in a year.
 moment('2016-03-12 12:00').add(1,
'day').format('LLL')
"March 13, 2016 12:00 PM"

moment('2016-03-12
12:00').add(24,'hour').format('LLL')
"March 13, 2016 1:00 PM"
moment('2016-02-28').add(1, 'year').format('LLL')
"February 28, 2017 12:00 AM"

moment('2016-02-28').add(365, 'days').format('LLL')
"February 27, 2017 12:00 AM"
As Seen on Stack Overflow
var startHours = 8;
var startMinutes = 30;

var ed = new Date();

var endHours = ed.getHours();
var endMinutes = ed.getMinutes();

var elapsedMinutes = (endHours * 60 + endMinutes) - (startHours * 60 +

startMinutes);

console.log(elapsedMinutes);
 Assumption
Time and date math work in the
same way.
moment('2016-01-01').add(1.5, 'hours').format('LLL')
"January 1, 2016 1:30 AM

moment('2016-01-01').add(1.5, 'days').format('LLL')
"January 3, 2016 12:00 AM"
Time Math vs Date Math
Time math:
Refers to operations involving hours, minutes, seconds, milliseconds
Works
by incrementing or decrementing the position on the global timeline by the
number of units in question
Can use fractional units

Date Math:
Refers to all operations larger than hours days, months, years, quarters, etc.
Works by moving places on the calendar
Cannot be converted to time math
Cannot use fractional units
 Assumption
All dates and times exist once in all
time zones
moment('2016-10-16').format('LLL')

October 16, 2016 1:00 AM

Spring Forward in JavaScript
Fall Back in JavaScript
Samoa
Samoa is very close to the international date line
Samoafound itself trading more frequently with Australia than
America
Samoa switched sides of the international date line
December 30 2011 does not exist in Samoan time
 Assumption
The Date object in JavaScript
works.
 var a = new Date('1/1/2016');
a.toString();

"Fri Jan 01 2016 00:00:00 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)"

var a = new Date('2016-01-01');

a.toString();

"Thu Dec 31 2015 18:00:00 GMT-0600 (Central Standard Time)"

Known JavaScript Date Issues
DST Transitions can go both directions
Months index from zero
Nosupport for time zones other than users local time zone and
UTC
Older browsers know only current DST rules
Parsing is implementation specific and basically completely broken
The spec is a disaster

http://codeofmatt.com/2013/06/07/javascript-
date-type-is-horribly-broken/
MOMENT.JS
Quality Date and Time in Javascript
Parsing
Consistently parses date values according to your expectations
More than 100 languages supported
Thousands of options for parse-able formats
Parse multiple formats if necessary
 moment('2016-12-21T13:25:22').format()
"2016-12-21T13:25:22-06:00"

moment('30/04/2016', 'DD/MM/YYYY').format()
"2016-04-30T00:00:00-05:00"

moment('February 25, 2016', 'MMMM DD, YYYY').format()

"2016-02-25T00:00:00-06:00"

moment('octubre 25, 2016', 'MMMM DD, YYYY', 'es').format()

"2016-10-25T00:00:00-05:00"
Formatting
Highly configurable format options
Locale based formatting functions
moment().format('MM/DD/YYYY')
"04/26/2016"

moment().format('MMMM D, YYYY hh:mm a')

"April 26, 2016 09:26 pm"
moment().format('L')
"04/26/2016"

moment().locale('en-gb').format('L')
"26/04/2016"

moment().format('LLL')
"April 26, 2016 9:28 PM"

moment().locale('ar').format('LLL')
": "
Sane Math
Add and subtract any unit
StartOf/EndOf

Difference
var a = new Date();
a.setDate(a.getDate() - 5);

moment().subtract(5, 'days');
var d = new Date();
var diff = d.getDate() - d.getDay() + (day == 0 ? -6:1);
d.setDate(diff);
d.setHours(0,0,0,0);

moment().startOf('week')
var d1 = new Date();
var d2 = new Date(01/01/2016);
var months;
months = (d2.getFullYear() - d1.getFullYear()) * 12;
months -= d1.getMonth() + 1;
months += d2.getMonth();
var diff = months <= 0 ? 0 : months;

moment().diff('2016-01-01', 'months');
Relative Time
moment().subtract(3, 'months').fromNow()
"3 months ago"

moment().subtract(2, 'seconds').fromNow()
"a few seconds ago"

moment().add(4,
'hours').locale('tlh').fromNow()
"loS rep pIq"

Over 100 locales. This is

Klingon.
 Time Zones (With Moment
TimeZone)
moment.tz('2016-04-25T02:30:00Z',
'America/Los_Angeles').format()
"2016-04-24T19:30:00-07:00"
moment.tz('2016-04-25T02:30:00Z',
'Europe/Berlin').format()
"2016-04-25T04:30:00+02:00"
 IN SUMMARY
We all know what happens when you assume
CONSIDER ALL PERSPECTIVES
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN LOCAL AND
ABSOLUTE TIME
REMEMBER, TIME ZONES CHANGE
RAPIDLY
STORE FUTURE DATES IN LOCAL
TIME
DISTINGUISH BETWEEN DATE MATH
AND TIME MATH
DONT TRUST JAVASCRIPT DATE
USE A QUALITY LIBRARY
MAKE NO ASSUMPTIONS
Be like this guy:
Additional Resources
Date and Time Fundamentals Matt Johnson, Pluralsight
https://www.pluralsight.com/courses/date-time-fundamentals
Matt Johnsons Blog
http://codeofmatt.com/
Lau Taarnskovs Blog
http://www.creativedeletion.com /
NodaTimes Documentation
http://nodatime.org/
Time Programming Fundamentals Greg Miller CPPCon 2015
http://bit.ly/1SgO3E0
Moment.js
http://momentjs.com/
 About Me
www.maggiepint.com

@maggiepint

maggiepint@gmail.com

https://
github.com/maggiepint