How to do date/time comparison

Question

Is there any options in doing date comparison in Go? I have to sort data based on date and time - independently. So I might allow an object that occurs within a range of dat

Answer 1

The following solved my problem of converting string into date

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    value  := "Thu, 05/19/11, 10:47PM"
    // Writing down the way the standard time would look like formatted our way
    layout := "Mon, 01/02/06, 03:04PM"
    t, _ := time.Parse(layout, value)
    fmt.Println(t)
}

// => "Thu May 19 22:47:00 +0000 2011"

Thanks to paul adam smith

Answer 2

For comparison between two times use time.Sub()

// utc life
loc, _ := time.LoadLocation("UTC")

// setup a start and end time
createdAt := time.Now().In(loc).Add(1 * time.Hour)
expiresAt := time.Now().In(loc).Add(4 * time.Hour)

// get the diff
diff := expiresAt.Sub(createdAt)
fmt.Printf("Lifespan is %+v", diff)

The program outputs:

Lifespan is 3h0m0s

http://play.golang.org/p/bbxeTtd4L6

Answer 3

For case when your interval's end it's date without hours like "from 2017-01-01 to whole day of 2017-01-16" it's better to adjust interval's to 23 hours 59 minutes and 59 seconds like:

end = end.Add(time.Duration(23*time.Hour) + time.Duration(59*time.Minute) + time.Duration(59*time.Second)) 

if now.After(start) && now.Before(end) {
    ...
}

Answer 4

Recent protocols prefer usage of RFC3339 per golang time package documentation.

In general RFC1123Z should be used instead of RFC1123 for servers that insist on that format, and RFC3339 should be preferred for new protocols. RFC822, RFC822Z, RFC1123, and RFC1123Z are useful for formatting; when used with time.Parse they do not accept all the time formats permitted by the RFCs.

cutOffTime, _ := time.Parse(time.RFC3339, "2017-08-30T13:35:00Z")
// POSTDATE is a date time field in DB (datastore)
query := datastore.NewQuery("db").Filter("POSTDATE >=", cutOffTime).

Answer 5

Use the time package to work with time information in Go.

Time instants can be compared using the Before, After, and Equal methods. The Sub method subtracts two instants, producing a Duration. The Add method adds a Time and a Duration, producing a Time.

Play example:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func inTimeSpan(start, end, check time.Time) bool {
    return check.After(start) && check.Before(end)
}

func main() {
    start, _ := time.Parse(time.RFC822, "01 Jan 15 10:00 UTC")
    end, _ := time.Parse(time.RFC822, "01 Jan 16 10:00 UTC")

    in, _ := time.Parse(time.RFC822, "01 Jan 15 20:00 UTC")
    out, _ := time.Parse(time.RFC822, "01 Jan 17 10:00 UTC")

    if inTimeSpan(start, end, in) {
        fmt.Println(in, "is between", start, "and", end, ".")
    }

    if !inTimeSpan(start, end, out) {
        fmt.Println(out, "is not between", start, "and", end, ".")
    }
}