Timestamp Format & UTC Timezone Offset Support

Owned by Andrew Rankin
Last updated: Oct 28, 2020
2 min read
This article pertains to: Legacy API (V1)

What Timezone formats should we expect data record timestamps to be returned in?

Validic will return timestamps in two different formats based on the timezone data formats provided by our vendor integration partners: Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) and Users Local Time (LT). If a vendor provides UTC timezone offset support Validic will return timestamps in ISO 8601 format in UTC time with an accompanying UTC offset in a separate field. With this information you may then make the calculations to associate that record with the timezone in which the activity was undertaken upon ingestion into your system. However, if timezone offset is not supported by the vendor Validic will return data record timestamps in either in UTC or LT. You should plan to programmatically account for these timezone format differences based on your use case and if/how you choose to render activity timestamps to your end users.

A few examples of the varying timezone formats you can expect to receive from Validic are below:

  • Adidas provides fitness record timestamps in UTC; however, Adidas does not support a UTC offset, so records from adidas will be delivered in the UTC time of when that activity was completed.

  • FatSecret does not provide timezone offset support and fitness records returned from FatSecret will be representative of the users local time setting they have applied to the FatSecret application.

  • Fitbit object records are returned in UTC format and Fitbit provides timezone offset support, so timestamp format is ISO 8601 standard UTC format "YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ" "+00:00", where UTC Time Zone offset (+00:00) is appended when supported as is the case with Fitbit data records.

​Please review our Timestamp Timezone Support and Format support article which provides a comprehensive and detailed outline of Timestamp format by Object Type and Timezone Offset Support for all supported vendor integration partners.