What is the Z ending on date strings like 2014-01-01T00:00:00.588Z

java date datetime datetime-format
J145 picture J145 · Jan 8, 2015 · Viewed 9.9k times · Source

Im doing a fetch to get a date from a database in java (the date should always be 2014-01-01T00:00:00). I'm getting the following time returned: 2014-01-01T00:00:00.588Z.

My questions is, what is the "588Z" at the end? and would this number be different the retrieve was done in a different timezone? i.e. would the number 588 be a different number in a different time zone.

Thanks for any help I may get.

Answer

Adam picture Adam · Jan 8, 2015

The Z stands for the zero UTC offset.

If the time is in UTC, add a Z directly after the time without a space.
Z is the zone designator for the zero UTC offset.
"09:30 UTC" is therefore represented as "09:30Z" or "0930Z", while "14:45:15 UTC" would be "14:45:15Z" or "144515Z".

The portion immediately before the Z translates into fraction of second; here, 588.

From your question above, 00:00:00.588 means "about a half second past midnight", with the last three digits after the period, 588, translating: milliseconds.

... more details here on (ISO 8601 standard).

Related questions

How to convert java.util.Date to java.sql.Date?

I am trying to use a java.util.Date as input and then creating a query with it - so I need a java.sql.Date. I was surprised to find that it couldn't do the conversion implicitly or explicitly …

Read More
How to get current timestamp in string format in Java? "yyyy.MM.dd.HH.mm.ss"

How to get timestamp in string format in Java? "yyyy.MM.dd.HH.mm.ss" String timeStamp = new SimpleDateFormat("yyyy.MM.dd.HH.mm.ss").format(new Timestamp()); This is what I have, but Timestamp() requires an parameters...

Read More
Get integer value of the current year in Java

I need to determine the current year in Java as an integer. I could just use java.util.Date(), but it is deprecated.

Read More