Confusing Display of Dates in Database View

Bryan

Hi there,

In my day to day operations for my app, it is critical that my data is saved in UTC, which it is currently doing.

However while doing a query based on dates recently, I was missing some data, and while investigating the dates in my Xano database I got very confused thinking my dates where incorrectly being stored in Xano, but it turns out it was right all along.

I'm in Sydney, Australia so time here is UTC+11

However when looking at my database it shows it like this

When reading this I feel, one would infer that it's a GMT/UTC time + (timezone hours)

But it actually is converting it to my local time and also showing the + timezone hours. Which kinda doesn't make sense. Either show the +timezone hours (and UTC for the rest) or hide the +timezone hours completely.

My preference is it for the dates to show UTC time + local timezone hours

What do you think?

Michael Udinski

Hey @Bryan - timestamps are stored as UNIX timestamps in milliseconds. What is displayed in the database is a human-readable format that defaults to your browser settings. You can change this to whatever format and timezone you prefer from your account page.

Bryan

Hi @Michael Udinski,

I know about that but it just seems like a confusing display. For eg. if I went where you told me to go and I change it to UTC + 0

Then the times displayed in the database show up as

Feb 12, 2004 12:00am +00:00

I personally don't see the need to have those extra +0000 in that situation.

Or at least I would suggest making it smaller text so there is some indication that one shouldn't read the time altogether, i.e

Feb 12 2004 12:00am (is one component) and +00:00 (is the second component)

Cause the way I read it now is

Feb 12 2004 11:00am (stored in the database) and add 11 hours to this to make it equal to my timezone cause of that +11 at the end.

Michael Udinski

Yeah, I definitely get your confusion. Date and time are very tricky and difficult to understand thanks to Timezones. The formats you are referencing are standard ways of displaying DateTime - certainly not unique to Xano or databases.