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Created November 16, 2012 15:37
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Rails and Javascript UTC timestamps
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gistfile1.md

#Rails:#

ActiveSupport.use_standard_json_time_format #=> true

http://apidock.com/rails/DateTime/to_json "Returns a JSON string representing the datetime. If ActiveSupport.use_standard_json_time_format is set to true, the ISO 8601 format is used."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601 "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". "14:45:15 UTC" would be "14:45:15Z" or "144515Z"."

#Javascript:#

Date.parse(""2012-11-16T14:46:04Z") # => 1353077164

Unixtimestamp.com shows 11 / 16 / 12 @ 8:46:04am EST (+DST when appropriate)

new Date().getTime() # => 1353079050

Unixtimestamp.com shows 11 / 16 / 12 @ 9:17:30am EST (+DST when appropriate)

This should demonstrate that parsing a Rails ISO 8601 formatted date yields a UTC time. Also, calling new Date().getTime() is yielding seconds since epoch in UTC time

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