Datetime Format in Go

This ALWAYS confuses me in Go. How the bloody hell do you do you take a time.Time value and convert it to a string?

The documentation is here and here and here. There aren’t really any clues about where to start.

When you dig further in to the package and its code, you find this little gem. It defines the values of the different placeholders that are available in our formatting.

So lets start by giving a short example:

    t := time.Date(2018, 1, 5, 20, 43, 22, 123456789, time.Local)
    fmt.Println(t.Format("2006/01/02 15:04:05.999 -07"))
    fmt.Println(t.Format("3:04 PM, January 2 06"))

    // Output:
    // 2018/01/05 20:43:22.123 +00
    // 8:43 PM, January 5 18

You can see this example here

Slight aside - who knew that you could add examples in Go, that alsobecome tests! See Testable Examples in Go for details.

The complete

So here it is, the complete Go date/time string format…

Code	Meaning	Example
January	It’s the full month name	“January” / “February”
Jan	The short month name	“Jan” / “Feb”
1	Month as plain number	“1” / “2” / “12”
01	Month as a 2 digits	“01” / “02” / “12”
Monday	The day of the week	“Monday” / “Wednesday”
Mon	The short day of the week	“Mon” / “Wed”
2	Day of the month as a plain number	“5” / “27”
02	Day of the month as a 2 digit number	“05” / “27”
_2	Day of the month as a plain number but fixed width	” 5” / “27”
15	Hour 24h, 2 digits	“02” / “15”
3	Hour 12h, plain number	“2” / “15”
03	Hour 12h, 2 digits	“02” / “15”
4	Minute as plain number	“9” / “42”
04	Minute as 2 digits	“09” / “42”
5	Seconds as plain number	“8” / “25”
05	Seconds as 2 digits	“08” / “25”
2006	Year as at least 4 digit number	“0023” / “1999” / “25643” (WFT!)
06	Year as 2 digit number	“23” / “99” / “43”
PM	12 hour period in upper case	“AM” / “PM”
pm	12 hour period in lower case	“am” / “pm”
MST	Timezone short code	“MST” / “CET” / “UTC”
Z0700	Timezone in hours and minutes offset (Z for UTC)	”-0600” / “+0100” / “Z”
Z070000	Timezone in hours, minutes and seconds offset (Z for UTC)	”-060000” / “+010000” / “Z”
Z07	Timezone in hours offset (Z for UTC)	”-06” / “+01” / “Z”
Z07:00	Timezone in colon seperated hours and minutes offset (Z for UTC)	”-06:00” / “+01:00” / “Z”
Z07:00:00	Timezone in colon seperated hours, minutes and seconds offset (Z for UTC)	”-06:00:00” / “+01:00:00” / “Z”
-0700	Timezone in hours and minutes, always numeric	”-0600” / “+0100” / “+0000”
-070000	Timezone in hours, minutes and seconds, always numeric	”-060000” / “+010000” / “+000000”
-0700	Timezone in hours and minutes, always numeric	”-0600” / “+0100” / “+0000”
-070:0:00	Timezone in colon seperated hours, minutes and seconds offset, always numeric	”-06:00:00” / “+01:00:00” / “+00:00:00”
.0/.00…	Fractions of seconds, including trailing zeros	”.67” / “.900”
.9/.99…	Fractions of seconds, including trailing zeros	”.67” / “.9”

Wow, there it is. That’s a lot of format!

But it’s still not easy to use.

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Datetime Format in Go

Pascal Dennerly

Datetime Format in Go

The complete

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