CODEWITHSUNDEEP
timeunix-timestamp
RLH
RLH

Reputation: 15698

Alternative to Unix Time for transactional record keeping

I am planning on starting a project that will need to record timestamps of incoming transactions. I appreciate that Unix Time is an integer value and I can use this type of functionality to my advantage. However, Unix Time only measures in seconds. As a minimal requirement I need to record transaction times at the millisecond level.

I know that there are ways that I could get around this issue, but I was wondering if there was another standardized way of representing time data that also represented milliseconds (or, some factor of sub-milliseconds) in the time value that is fully expressed as an integer value since epoch.

Does such a time format exist? FYI, so long as the date data-type is standardized, I don't care what system this is native in. I can code my own implementation, however, I would like to use an existing date/time format, rather than create my own.

Upvotes: 5

Views: 3795

Answers (3)

timthelion
timthelion

Reputation: 2727

UNIX time is not appropriate for time stamping transactions because it does some weird stuff, inserting leap seconds on occasion, thus making it so that you won't be able to add and subtract time stamps reliably, nor sort transactions by timestamp.

A more appropriate standard for timestamps is TAI https://www.nist.gov/pml/time-and-frequency-division/nist-time-frequently-asked-questions-faq#tai . TAI is stored in the same way as UNIX time as a number of seconds and or microseconds and or nanoseconds since the UNIX epoch, however, it is the true number, no leap seconds are added or removed. This means that you can actually add and subtract TAI timestamps to get elapsed time and TAI timestamps are always sortable. Unfortunately, support for TAI timestamps is somewhat limited. For example, linux added support for TAI timestamps only recently in version 3.10 python added this support only in version 3.9/time.html?highlight=time#module-time

Upvotes: 0

pauld
pauld

Reputation: 241

One place where such a standard is used is ECMAScript / Javascript. Javascript date objects use milliseconds since January 1, 1970, midnight UTC for their numerical integer representation. This is detailed here.

You can test this using your browser's console:

var d = new Date();
console.log(d.getTime()); // yields integer milliseconds since epoch

So yes, there is prior art for such a use.

Upvotes: 3

AlecTMH
AlecTMH

Reputation: 2725

date +%s

outputs timestamp in seconds

date +%s%N

returns timestamp in nanoseconds

To get milliseconds divide the nanoseconds by 1 000 000

Upvotes: 1

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