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phpapidateformatiso
Stefan
Stefan

Reputation: 2194

API response format for date+time (iso thing?)

What's the standard (or some kind of iso-conform thing) format to display date (year, month, day) and time (Hours minutes and seconds) together as an result of an API Request? Or should a timestamp be returned in this case?

Upvotes: 2

Views: 4361

Answers (4)

Shiplu Mokaddim
Shiplu Mokaddim

Reputation: 57670

Use ISO8601 format. And use UTC timezone always. Its the standard by ISO and should be parsable by any library.

Example 2012-02-28T20:27:21+0000

In php use DateTimeZone and DateTime object combindly to get an ISO8601 date. 

$dt = new DateTime("now", new DateTimeZone("UTC"));
echo $dt->format(DATE_ISO8601)`

See Date/Time in PHP manual to know more.

Upvotes: 7

CodeOverload
CodeOverload

Reputation: 48505

RFC822 Format: 18 Feb 2012 14:27:18 -0000

DAY MONTH YEAR HOUR:MINUTES:SECONDS UTC-OFFSET

Using date():

date('d M y H:i:s O')

Twitter's API uses it, And some of its benefits are that it's readable by humans and easy to parse in PHP, JavaScript, And other languages. And you know which timezone the date is presented in.

Upvotes: 0

Michael-O
Michael-O

Reputation: 18415

Either do a integer unix timestamp or do full ISO8601.

Upvotes: 1

Ofir Baruch
Ofir Baruch

Reputation: 10346

I think returning timestamp would be a better idea. It allows your API users to manipulate it easily. (My opinion)

Upvotes: 2

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