Booking up for Beauty

A Time in Go is a type describing a moment in time. The date and time information can be accessed, compared, and manipulated through its methods, but there are also some functions called on the time package itself. The current date and time can be retrieved through the time.Now function.

The time.Parse function parses strings into values of type Time. Go has a special way of how you define the layout you expect for the parsing. You need to write an example of the layout using the values from this special timestamp: Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 -0700 MST 2006.

For example:

import "time"

func parseTime() time.Time {
    date := "Tue, 09/22/1995, 13:00"
    layout := "Mon, 01/02/2006, 15:04"

    t, err := time.Parse(layout,date) // time.Time, error
}

// => 1995-09-22 13:00:00 +0000 UTC

The Time.Format() method returns a string representation of time. Just as with the Parse function, the target layout is again defined via an example that uses the values from the special timestamp.

For Example:

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    t := time.Date(1995,time.September,22,13,0,0,0,time.UTC)
    formattedTime := t.Format("Mon, 01/02/2006, 15:04") // string
    fmt.Println(formattedTime)
}

// => Fri, 09/22/1995, 13:00

Layout Options

For a custom layout use combination of these options. In Go predefined date and timestamp format constants are also available.

The time.Time type has various methods for accessing a particular time. e.g. Hour : Time.Hour() , Month : Time.Month(). More on how this works can be found in official documentation.

The time includes another type, Duration, representing elapsed time, plus support for locations/time zones, timers, and other related functionality that will be covered in another concept.