Date and time
Formats
For all date and time formats on GeoDB API, we use Internet Timestamps as defined in IETF RFC 3339.
For timestamps we use the notation date-time:
2025-12-31T00:00:00Z
For dates without time information we use the notation full-date:
2025-12-31
Given the international scope of the project and to bettter achieve interoperability, Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the only time zone throughout the GeoDB.
If other time zones are required, clients should be prepared to transform dates into a display format suitable for the locality.
Time Intervals
When querying resources based on datetime attributes (e.g., creation datetime), we use the parameter datetime specification of the OGC API Features - Part 1, by the Open Geospatial Consortium.
For such temporal attributes, a timestamp value would match where is on that day or within the time interval.
Based on the ABNF (Augmente Backus-Naur Form) syntax indicated in RFC 3339, §5.6, the different kinds of intervals are:
interval-bounded = date-time "/" date-time
interval-half-bounded-start = [".."] "/" date-time
interval-half-bounded-end = date-time "/" [".."]
interval = interval-closed / interval-half-bounded-start / interval-half-bounded-end
datetime = date-time / interval
Example time intervals
From February 12, 2018, 00:00:00 UTC to March 18, 2018, 12:31:12 UTC:
2018-02-12T00:00:00Z/2018-03-18T12:31:12Z
February 12, 2018, 00:00:00 UTC or later:
2018-02-12T00:00:00Z/..
March 18, 2018, 12:31:12 UTC or earlier:
../2018-03-18T12:31:12Z
Time interval parameters must be URL-encoded when necessary.
For instance, for GET requests the previous time interval would be URL-encoded as a query parameter as follows:
..%2F2018-03-18T12%3A31%3A12Z
And querying, for example, forest properties created on March 18, 2018, 12:31:12 UTC or earlier would be:
/forest_properties?created_at=..%2F2018-03-18T12%3A31%3A12Z