Like any programmer, I used to use Date for storing date time values on database, until I suffer with bugs related to timezone and DST (Daylight Saving Time). The most common symptom is the date fields, such as created_date or updated_date, often display 1 day prior to what it is set before: Let say an admin set the created_date to Jan 1st 2025 00:00:00 clients somehow see value Dec 31 2024, 23:00:00 .
I tried putting browser timezone information into adjusting timestamps but then I noticed that the code base became more complex and the bug still can’t be fixed when DST (Daylight Saving Time) happens. The bug will happen when:
- most of databases use integer representing microseconds (or timestamp) to store
datetimedata - users locate in many countries with different timezones
- Daylight Saving Time happens with no fixed schedule
Then I realize the power of standard: ISO 8601, is that it can be used to store date time values in plain text and still be sortable. Storing datetime as format YYYY-MM-DD HH:mm:ss at UTC, (or any format instructed in ISO 8601) can remove all headaches when using timestamp but also remain sorting & filtering capabilities. The only downside, is the frontend part and backend part has to make sure date time data is sent and received in ISO 8061 format instead of integers, and this conversion is simple enough and can help avoid days of debugging.
TheTechLead 