Development
Record and process time in various programming languages for logging, data storage, API interactions, etc.
Convert between timestamps and human-readable dates with real-time clock.
A Unix timestamp is the number of seconds or milliseconds that have elapsed since the Unix epoch (00:00:00 UTC on January 1, 1970). It's a simple decimal integer representing time in a standardized way, widely used in computer systems, programming languages, and databases.
1609459200→2021-01-01 00:00:001609459200000→2021-01-01 00:00:00Record and process time in various programming languages for logging, data storage, API interactions, etc.
Store creation time, update time, expiration time and other time-related fields.
Pass time information in RESTful APIs to ensure time consistency between different systems.
Analyze time information in server logs and application logs for troubleshooting and performance analysis.
Timezones are standard time systems used in different regions of the Earth. Timestamps are based on UTC (Coordinated Universal Time), but need to be converted according to timezone when displayed.
January 1, 1970 was chosen as the Unix epoch, the reference point selected when Unix operating system was developed. This date has become the standard in computer systems.
By the number of digits: 10 digits for seconds, 13 digits for milliseconds. For example: 1609459200 (seconds), 1609459200000 (milliseconds).
Timestamps are simple numbers, easy to store and compare; not affected by timezones, avoiding complexity of timezone conversion; highly compatible across different programming languages and systems.