ISO 8601

a standard for date and time representation

created by Oliver Schrenk / @oschrenk

10/05/13 at 4?

Date only

2013-10-30

• 4 digits for the year
• 2 digits for month
• 2 digits for day
• separated with dash (optional but advised)
• indicates local time zone

Time only for local use

16:00 or 16:00:00

• 2 digits for hour
• 2 digits for minute
• 2 digits for second (optional)
• separated with colon (optional but advised)
• indicates local time zone

Time only for international use

16:00Z or 16:00:00Z

• 2 digits for hour
• 2 digits for minute
• 2 digits for second (optional)
• Separated with colon (optional but advised)
• Z indicates that time is represented in UTC

Time only with explicit time zone use

16:00+02:00 or 16:00+0200 or 16:00+02

• 2 digits for hour
• 2 digits for minute (optional)
• Separated with colon (optional but advised)
• + indicates offset from UTC
• stick to one format

Combined date and time format

2013-05-10T16:00+02:00 or 2013-05-10 16:00

• date designation
• time designation
• T separator can be omitted but is not standard

Periods of time

2013-05-10T16:00/2013-05-10T17:30 or 2013-05-10T16:00/17:30 or 2013-05-10/12

• start of period followed by / and end of period
• higher order components can be omitted

created by xkcd

Extra slides

• millisecond accuracy: 16:00:00.345
• day of year based date: yyyy-ddd
• week of year based date: yyyy-wwww-d