Time Formatting / Parsing

Go supports time formatting and parsing via pattern-based layouts. Comments from Go by Example.

Imports



In [1]:

    
import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

Basic Time Formatting

Here’s a basic example of formatting a time according to RFC3339, using the corresponding layout constant.



In [2]:

    
t := time.Now()









    Out[2]:





2016-09-08 07:04:48 Local



In [3]:

    
t.Format(time.RFC3339)









    Out[3]:





"2016-09-08T07:04:49-05:00"

Time Parsing

Time parsing uses the same layout values as Format.



In [4]:

    
t1, _ := time.Parse(time.RFC3339, "2012-11-01T22:08:41+00:00")









    Out[4]:





2012-11-01 22:08:41

Parse will return an error on malformed input explaining the parsing problem.



In [5]:

    
ansic := "Mon Jan _2 15:04:05 2006"
_, e := time.Parse(ansic, "8:41PM")









    Out[5]:





&time.ParseError{
  Layout:     "Mon Jan _2 15:04:05 2006",
  Value:      "8:41PM",
  LayoutElem: "Mon",
  ValueElem:  "8:41PM",
  Message:    "",
}

Custom Layouts

Format and Parse use example-based layouts. Usually you’ll use a constant from time for these layouts, but you can also supply custom layouts. Layouts must use the reference time Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006 to show the pattern with which to format/parse a given time/string. The example time must be exactly as shown: the year 2006, 15 for the hour, Monday for the day of the week, etc.



In [6]:

    
t.Format("3:04PM")









    Out[6]:





"7:05AM"



In [7]:

    
t.Format("Mon Jan _2 15:04:05 2006")









    Out[7]:





"Thu Sep  8 07:05:16 2016"



In [8]:

    
t.Format("2006-01-02T15:04:05.999999-07:00")









    Out[8]:





"2016-09-08T07:05:17.689228-05:00"



In [9]:

    
form := "3 04 PM"
t2, _ := time.Parse(form, "8 41 PM")









    Out[9]:





0-01-01 20:41:00 UTC

String Formatting

For purely numeric representations you can also use standard string formatting with the extracted components of the time value.



In [10]:

    
fmt.Printf("%d-%02d-%02dT%02d:%02d:%02d-00:00\n",
        t.Year(), t.Month(), t.Day(),
        t.Hour(), t.Minute(), t.Second())









    Out[10]:





2016-09-08T07:05:21-00:00
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