Datetime

Watchmen use [0-9] part of string to parse date time. Thus, supporting for timezone part is limited.

info

Supported formats are defined in watchmen-data-kernel module, visit here for more details.

Default Formats

Time

There are 2 default formats for time:

• %H%M%S,
• %H%M.

Date

There are 3 default formats for date:

• %Y%m%d,
• %d%m%Y,
• %m%d%Y.

caution

%d%m and %m%d may lead confusion, reorder formats or simply remove formats which does not need.

Datetime

There are 6 default formats for datetime:

• %Y%m%d%H%M%S,
• %d%m%Y%H%M%S,
• %m%d%Y%H%M%S,
• %Y%m%d%H%M,
• %d%m%Y%H%M,
• %m%d%Y%H%M.

Full Datetime

There are 3 default formats for full datetime:

• %Y%m%d%H%M%S%f,
• %d%m%Y%H%M%S%f,
• %m%d%Y%H%M%S%f.

tip

%f is micro-second with 6 digits in python.

Timezone Support

The only support for timezone is %z, such as +0000.

danger

Note in most scenarios, timezone is not used and will not be saved. Basically speaking, compatibility of timezone is for receiving data only.

Parse Logic

• Remove ^0-9+ characters from given string,
• Find suitable format according to left string length,
  • Plus 2 when format contains %Y,
  • Plus 3 when format contains %z,
  • Format must contain %f and must not contain %z when string length is more than 14,
  • Format must contain %f and string length must be more than 18 when format contains %z.

Example 1:
Given string is 2022/01/01 23:59:59, the suitable formats are %Y%m%d%H%M%S, %d%m%Y%H%M%S and %m%d%Y%H%M%S.

Example 2:
Given string is 2022/01/01 23:59:59.123456+0500, the suitable format is %Y%m%d%H%M%S%f%z, which is not default built-in.