DateTime.parse() does not strictly include RFC 3339: limited millisecond length

[ericklaus-wf]

RFC 3339 defines the "time-secfrac" component of a timestamp to be "." 1*DIGIT, which permits second fractions of unlimited length. DateTime.parse() only accepts a second fraction component of up to length 6.

The length limitation on "millis_opt" should be removed, or the documentation should be updated to note that DateTime.parse() does not strictly support RFC 3339.

[stevenroose]

I have this problem as well. Dart fails to parse dates generated by Go, f.e.: 2018-01-29T18:39:51.396781283+01:00.

[stevenroose]

Is there a reason why Dart refers to "ISO8601" while Go refers to "RFC3339".

Could the two teams in Google maybe agree on a standard to follow? :)

[curtiscovington]

I'm having this issue too. It is really annoying having to chop off some digits of the string I get from Go's time.Time in order for DateTime to parse it correctly.

[stevenroose]

I think I solved it by in Go, making a newTime := time.Unix(oldTime.Unix()), which truncate to seconds.

[curtiscovington]

@stevenroose I solved it in dart by just taking a substring. But I think the Dart SDK should address this specifically. A default server timestamp from Go should have no issues parsing through Dart. Even if we lose precision. Perhaps the parse could optionally chop off the extra digits?

[stevenroose]

@curtiscovington I had a substring thing first, but it broke when using different time zones etc. Yeah Dart should surely solve this.

[lrhn]

See also #1878.
We should extend the formats recognized by DateTime.parse.
Accepting more formats does come with a cost, since all the necessary code will be included when you use the function, even if you only use a single simple format.

[vincevargadev]

I have the same issue with creating Dart DateTime object coming from a Go backend (for example: const invalid = "2019-05-31T10:35:45.347333481Z";).

As you see this format is using nanoseconds (10^-9) and the Dart DateTime.parse code only allows up to microseconds (10^-6).

The quick fix I used: drop the sub-microsecond digits (from between 7th to 9th)

// You could add a stricter/looser verification, but for my usecase, this was enough.
// Also, decide what you want to do with an invalid input: return null, return the original string, or throw an exception?
String _ignoreSubMicro(String s) {
  if (s.length > 27) return s.substring(0, 26) + s[s.length - 1];
  return s;
}
// Example usage
void main() {
  const invalidNano = "2019-05-31T10:35:45.347333481Z";
  // DateTime.parse(invalidNano); // This would fail:
  final date = DateTime.parse(_ignoreSubMicro(invalidNano));
  print(date);
}

What would be the implications of allowing nanosecond values? Or is it complicated because of the time zones? As I see the parse method could ignore extra digits relatively easily, so I assume there are other reasons you decided not to update the parse method. Would you merge a pull request adding the nano support? Which solution would you merge (ignore sub-microsecond values, round sub-microsecond values to the microsecond, complete nanoseconds support)?

[kinex]

Same problem with date strings created in C#: For example:

DateTimeOffset.Now.ToString("O")

outputs: "2019-08-09T06:55:01.8968264+00:00"

[mtcliatt]

Can we get a response to vargavince91's comment please?

[Albert221]

I created a pub package to address this exact problem for built_value: https://pub.dev/packages/rfc_3339_date_time_serializer

[lewinpauli]

I did it the following way:

import 'package:intl/intl.dart'; //needed for DateFormat

String formatToGolangCompatibleRFC3339NanoUtc(DateTime date) {
    
      return DateFormat("yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.SSSSSSSSS+00:00").format(DateTime.parse(date.toString()).toUtc());
}

Usage:

print(formatToGolangCompatibleRFC3339NanoUtc(DateTime.now()));

Output:

2023-05-02T14:13:19.275000000+00:00

Note:

if you dont want to use utc you can use "date.timeZoneOffset" and replace the hardcoded +00:00