Golang Date and Time (Datetime)

Time is incredibly important not only to us as humans but also to devices. When it comes to timestamps, they play an incredible role as they allow us to record and manipulate the time-related data.

In Go, we have the “time” package which comes packed with lots of tools and features to work with time related operations including timestamps.

In this tutorial, we will learn about datetime and how to work with them in Go without using the external packages.

What Is Datetime?

Datetime refers to the combination of date (calendar date) and time (clock time) information. It includes details such as the year, month, day, hour, minute, second, and timezone offset.

Create a Datetime in Go

In Go, we can create a datetime using the time.Now() function which returns the current time in the local timezone.

An example is as follows:

package main
import (
"fmt"
"time"
)
func main() {
currentTime := time.Now()
fmt.Println("Current Time:", currentTime)
}

This should return the current time and print it to the console. The function uses the time zone that is configured in the current device.

Example Output:

Current Time: 2023-11-30 10:39:34.810855 +0300 EAT m=+0.000544667

Formatting the Datetime

We can also format the datetime to follow specific layouts which are very useful in consistency and template.

We can use the layout constants like “2006-01-02 15:04:05” to define the desired format. Consider an example as follows:

package main
import (
"fmt"
"time"
)
func main() {
currentTime := time.Now()
formattedTime := currentTime.Format("2006-01-02 15:04:05")
fmt.Println("Formatted Time:", formattedTime)
}

Resulting Output:

Formatted Time: 2023-11-30 10:41:59

Parsing the Datetime

To convert a string into a datetime, we can use the “time.Parse” function, specifying the layout that matches the input string.

package main
import (
"fmt"
"time"
)
func main() {
inputTime := "2023-11-30 10:41:59"
parsedTime, err := time.Parse("2006-01-02 15:04:05", inputTime)
if err != nil {
fmt.Println("Error:", err)
} else {
fmt.Println("Parsed Time:", parsedTime)
}
}

The resulting output is as follows:

Parsed Time: 2023-11-30 10:41:59 +0000 UTC

Setting the Time Zones

We can also specify the target time zone without actually modifying the time zone of the host machine.

We can use the “time.LoadLocation” function to obtain a “time.Location” value that represents a specific time zone and then set it for a datetime.

package main
import (
"fmt"
"time"
)
func main() {
loc, _ := time.LoadLocation("America/New_York")
currentTime := time.Now().In(loc)
fmt.Println("Current Time in New York:", currentTime)
}

Output:

Current Time in New York: 2023-11-30 02:45:44.28346 -0500 EST

This returns the current time in the specified location.

Conclusion

In this tutorial, we learned how to use and work with datetime in Go by taking advantage of the “time” package and the provided methods.