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I'm surprised to see nothing about formatting dates, which in my experience is the worst interop issue with JSON. I'm glad people are working on this though---t

I'm surprised to see nothing about formatting dates, which in my experience is the worst interop issue with JSON. I'm glad people are working on this though---thank you!

kjhughes 12y ago
Dates and times are covered: 4.3. Time and Date Handling Protocols often contain data items that are designed to contain timestamps or time durations. It is RECOMMENDED that all such data items be expressed as string values in ISO 8601 format, as specified in [RFC3339], with the additional restrictions that uppercase rather than lowercase letters be used, that the timezone be included not defaulted, and that optional trailing seconds be included even when their value is "00". It is also RECOMMENDED that all data items containing time durations conform to the "duration" production in Appendix A of RFC 3339, with the same additional restrictions.
- btown 12y ago
  For what it's worth, Salesforce even conforms to ISO 8601 internally. So, you know, if you're trying to develop agile tools for translating between JSON and Salesforce API records, then, um, things should just work... takes a brief moment to contemplate the reality of his existence The flip side of this is that if you're not using ISO 8601 in your JSON, you're doing worse than Salesforce. That's about as good of an incentive I can give this community to try to standardize their organizations around this standard!
  - snuxoll 12y ago
    I'm really surprised there's still a lot of people out there that don't use ISO 8601, I haven't used anything but for nearly a decade :/
    - MichaelGG 12y ago
      Twilio was the most shocking example. They use that braindead[1] "RFC" style that includes day of week and month name in English. I remember feeling it looked like the most ugly part of their API; no reason for this silliness. (Maybe they've changed it since I looked a few years ago). 1: It made sense in like the early 70s when people read and wrote all headers by hand. It's been stupid for a much longer time than it made sense though.
- pjungwir 12y ago
  Oh that's great! It looks like the HTML version of his link doesn't have any subsections under section 4: http://rfc7159.net/rfc7159 http://rfc7159.net/rfc7159 but the plaintext version does: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7493.txt http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7493.txt Maybe the document is still in flux and the text version represents a later addition? EDIT: Oops, my first link is to the original JSON spec. Sorry for the confusion!
- KaiserPro 12y ago
  but its only "recommended" which means it can not adhere to this, and still be compliant. It seems a bit pointless to make a new spec and not enforce one of the main things that trip people up.

I'm surprised to see nothing about formatting dates, which in my experience is the worst interop issue with JSON. I'm glad people are working on this though---thank you!

kjhughes 12y ago

Dates and times are covered: 4.3. Time and Date Handling Protocols often contain data items that are designed to contain timestamps or time durations. It is RECOMMENDED that all such data items be expressed as string values in ISO 8601 format, as specified in [RFC3339], with the additional restrictions that uppercase rather than lowercase letters be used, that the timezone be included not defaulted, and that optional trailing seconds be included even when their value is "00". It is also RECOMMENDED that all data items containing time durations conform to the "duration" production in Appendix A of RFC 3339, with the same additional restrictions.

btown 12y ago
For what it's worth, Salesforce even conforms to ISO 8601 internally. So, you know, if you're trying to develop agile tools for translating between JSON and Salesforce API records, then, um, things should just work... takes a brief moment to contemplate the reality of his existence The flip side of this is that if you're not using ISO 8601 in your JSON, you're doing worse than Salesforce. That's about as good of an incentive I can give this community to try to standardize their organizations around this standard!
- snuxoll 12y ago
  I'm really surprised there's still a lot of people out there that don't use ISO 8601, I haven't used anything but for nearly a decade :/
  - MichaelGG 12y ago
    Twilio was the most shocking example. They use that braindead[1] "RFC" style that includes day of week and month name in English. I remember feeling it looked like the most ugly part of their API; no reason for this silliness. (Maybe they've changed it since I looked a few years ago). 1: It made sense in like the early 70s when people read and wrote all headers by hand. It's been stupid for a much longer time than it made sense though.
pjungwir 12y ago
Oh that's great! It looks like the HTML version of his link doesn't have any subsections under section 4: http://rfc7159.net/rfc7159 http://rfc7159.net/rfc7159 but the plaintext version does: http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7493.txt http://www.rfc-editor.org/rfc/rfc7493.txt Maybe the document is still in flux and the text version represents a later addition? EDIT: Oops, my first link is to the original JSON spec. Sorry for the confusion!
KaiserPro 12y ago
but its only "recommended" which means it can not adhere to this, and still be compliant. It seems a bit pointless to make a new spec and not enforce one of the main things that trip people up.