How to Correctly Handle Timezones When Using Go\'s time.Parse Function?

time.Parse Behaviour

When attempting to convert a string to a time.Time value using the time.Parse function in Go, one may encounter unexpected results if the timezone is not specified correctly. This article explores the solution to this issue by aligning the timezone formatting with ISO 8601.

The time.Parse function requires a layout string that defines the format of the input string. The provided layout string "2013-05-13T18:41:34.848Z" does not accurately represent the reference time used by Golang, which is "Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006" in the UTC-0700 timezone.

To resolve this issue, we need to define a custom layout string that matches the reference time. The following layout string should be used:

const longForm = "2006-01-02 15:04:05 -0700"

This layout string matches the format of the reference time, where:

• 2006-01-02 represents the date in the format YYYY-MM-DD
• 15:04:05 represents the time in the format HH:MM:SS
• -0700 represents the timezone offset of UTC-0700

When we use this corrected layout string, the time.Parse function can successfully convert the input string to a time.Time value:

t, err := time.Parse(longForm, "2013-05-13 18:41:34.848 -0700")
if err != nil {
  log.Fatal(err)
}
fmt.Println(t)

This will correctly output:

2013-05-13 01:41:34.848 +0000 UTC

This demonstrates how to handle timezone formatting correctly when using time.Parse in Go to ensure accurate time conversions. By aligning the layout string with the reference time and timezone specifications, expected results can be obtained.

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