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Setting Time Stamp with API_EditRecord Using Epoch Milliseconds

  • December 30, 2020
  • 0 replies
  • 51 views
I can successfully set a time stamp value using API_EditRecord by supplying a number of milliseconds since 01-01-1970.  This is a 13-digit integer, generated from a 10-digit epoch time (seconds) provided by my operating system, multiplied by 1000. My users are in the United States Central Time Zone, and my app is configured to display times as US Central Time. US Central Standard Time is six hours "behind" Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).

When I update the time stamp using a US Central Time epoch milliseconds value, my app displays a time six hours in the future.  For example if I set the time to be 12-30-2020 3:15:00 PM, it's displayed in the app as 12-30-2020 9:15:00 PM.  If I subtract six hours from the time stamp I actually want to use, the time is displayed appropriately in my app.

Can anyone confirm that this is the expected behavior, and that my time stamp value requires a time zone offset (-6 hours, or -5 for Daylight Savings Time) in order to display correctly in my app?   Thanks for reading ...

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Ad Planner System Admin
Technical Solutions Specialist
RR Donnelley
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  • NathanHawe
  • Registered
  • December 30, 2020
I believe that's the expected behavior.  The milliseconds value doesn't include any time zone offset information so it makes sense to treat all values as UTC.  The API will accept a string format like MM-dd-yyyy H:mm to update date/time fields which can be a bit easier to generate in UTC especially in JavaScript where you have UTC specific methods on Date objects.

let d = new Date();
let formattedDateString = `${d.getUTCMonth()+1}-${d.getUTCDate()}-${d.getUTCFullYear()} ${d.getUTCHours()}:${d.getUTCMinutes()}`​


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Nathan Hawe
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