Date formats in Atombeat

[Tim Pizey]

Hi,

We are using atombeat within Chasssis and have a saved instance of an
atom entry from last July.

This gave an update timestamp of 2010-07-02T16:47:08.057+01:00
We now have update timestamps of the form 2011-03-25T17:12:02.17Z

I have just updated again today 2011-04-05T14:59:57.617Z to check if
this is BST related.

I know timestamps and calendars are a tarpit, but is it fair to assume
we will not see the offset format again?

cheers
Tim

--
Tim Pizey - http://pizey.net/~timp
Centre for Genomics and Global Health - http://cggh.org

[Alistair Miles]

Hi Tim,

On Tue, Apr 05, 2011 at 04:04:02PM +0100, Tim Pizey wrote:
> Hi,
>
> We are using atombeat within Chasssis and have a saved instance of an
> atom entry from last July.
>
> This gave an update timestamp of 2010-07-02T16:47:08.057+01:00
> We now have update timestamps of the form 2011-03-25T17:12:02.17Z
>
> I have just updated again today 2011-04-05T14:59:57.617Z to check if
> this is BST related.
>
> I know timestamps and calendars are a tarpit, but is it fair to assume
> we will not see the offset format again?

The short answer is, I'm not sure. The AtomBeat atomdb module [1] uses the XPath
function current-dateTime() to generate values for the atom:updated element,
so what you get will depend on eXist's implementation of that function [2]. So
exist-open is probably the best place to ask.

Cheers,

Alistair

[1] http://code.google.com/p/atombeat/source/browse/trunk/parent/atombeat-service/src/main/files/lib/atomdb.xqm
[2] https://exist.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/exist/releases/eXist-1.4/src/org/exist/xquery/functions/FunCurrentDateTime.java

--
Alistair Miles
Head of Epidemiological Informatics
Centre for Genomics and Global Health <http://cggh.org>
The Wellcome Trust Centre for Human Genetics
Roosevelt Drive
Oxford
OX3 7BN
United Kingdom
Web: http://purl.org/net/aliman
Email: alim...@gmail.com
Tel: +44 (0)1865 287669

[Tim Pizey]

Hi Alistair,

Thanks, that this is an exist API issue is enough for me, I am
guessing that they will not revert.

From my reading of http://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339 the date format
is now in the best
practice 'Zulu' time used by air traffic control.

cheers
Tim

--

Tim Pizey - http://pizey.net/~timp

Centre for Genomics and Global Health - http://cggh.org