Converting a json format timestamp to golangs time.Time

Question

I have a datetime string in json with the below format

 /Date(315513000000+0530)/

I would like to convert this into golangs time.Time format. I tried passing this string to the below function

func parseDateField(dateInput string) (int64, error) {
    startIdx := strings.Index(dateInput, "(")
    if startIdx == -1 {
        return 0, errors.New("Error parsing quote Date. '(' symbol not found")
    }

    endIdx := strings.Index(dateInput, "+")
    if endIdx == -1 {
    return 0, errors.New("Error parsing quote Date. '+' symbol not found")
     }
    dateStr := dateInput[startIdx+1 : endIdx]
    date, err := strconv.ParseInt(dateStr, 10, 64)
    if err != nil {
        fmt.Printf(" err : \n %+v \n", err)
        return 0, err
     }
     tm := time.Unix(date, 0)
     fmt.Printf("\n time  : \n %+v \n", tm)
     dateAsEpoch := int64(date / 1000)
     fmt.Printf("\n dateAsEpoch  : \n %+v \n", dateAsEpoch)
     return dateAsEpoch, nil
}

I'm getting the below outputs

 time  : 
 11968-03-18 01:30:00 +0530 IST 


 dateAsEpoch  : 
 315513000

I'm guessing the parsing isnt done right - what am i doing wrong?

wait, what is the right date? what kind of format is this? – Not_a_Golfer Mar 11 '19 at 21:31 — Not_a_Golfer, Mar 11 '19 at 21:31
See https://stackoverflow.com/a/15952652/1246282 – chrsblck Mar 11 '19 at 21:47 — chrsblck, Mar 11 '19 at 21:47

icza · Accepted Answer · 2019-03-12T07:59:08.193

That time format seems to be the elapsed milliseconds since epoch and a signed 4-digit zone offset (hour and min).

Easiest would be to use fmt.Sscanf() to parse it, something like this:

_, err = fmt.Sscanf(s, "/Date(%d+%02d%02d)/", &ms, &zoneHour, &zoneMin)

Of course if the zone offset is negative, the format will not match. That can be handled by a second attempt of parsing, + replaced by a - in the format string.

Once you have the ms, multiply it by a million to get nanoseconds, so you can pass that to time.Unix() (it is valid to pass a nanoseconds value outside of the [0, 999999999] range).

Last you can use time.FixedZone() to obtain a zone corresponding to the zone offset in the input, and then use Time.In() to "switch over" to this zone.

^{Note that the milliseconds since epoch is zone-independent (it is given in UTC zone). Switching over to the source's zone offset is only required so that when you print the time (or you access its "fields" like year, month, day), you will see the intended date and time, as that would be different in another zone. For example the instance you have, it designates the date 1980-01-01 and 0 time in the day. Without the +0530 zone, that would be a different day, it would be 1979-12-31 18:30:00 +0000 UTC.}

Here's an example doing it:

func parse(s string) (t time.Time, err error) {
    var ms int64
    var zhour, zmin int

    if _, err = fmt.Sscanf(s, "/Date(%d+%02d%02d)/", &ms, &zhour, &zmin); err != nil {
        if _, err = fmt.Sscanf(s, "/Date(%d-%02d%02d)/", &ms, &zhour, &zmin); err != nil {
            return time.Time{}, fmt.Errorf("Failed to parse: %v", err)
        }
        zhour = -zhour
        zmin = -zmin
    }

    t = time.Unix(0, ms*1000000)
    t = t.In(time.FixedZone("", zhour*3600+zmin*60))
    return
}

Testing it:

fmt.Println(parse("/Date(315513000000+0530)/"))
fmt.Println(parse("/Date(315513000000-0530)/"))
fmt.Println(parse("invalid"))

Output (try it on the Go Playground):

1980-01-01 00:00:00 +0530 +0530 <nil>
1979-12-31 13:00:00 -0530 -0530 <nil>
0001-01-01 00:00:00 +0000 UTC Failed to parse: input does not match format

Converting a json format timestamp to golangs time.Time

1 Answers1