Time and Formatting

Layouts by example

The time package formats and parses with layouts written as the reference time Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006 (1 2 3 4 5 6 7 in American order), so "2006-01-02 15:04" means year-month-day hour:minute. Predefined layouts include RFC3339. Durations are typed (90 * time.Minute), times carry a location (convert with In), and parse errors are explicit. Store and transmit times in UTC or RFC3339 with an offset, and convert to local time for display.

Formatting, zones, durations and parse errors, run

I ran this with Go 1.27.1 (go run . in a module named demo, standard library only). The same instant formats as a date-time, RFC3339, and in Indian Standard Time (UTC+5:30); 90 minutes later is 10:35AM; month 13 fails to parse.

package main

import (
	"fmt"
	"time"
)

func main() {
	t := time.Date(2026, time.October, 2, 9, 5, 0, 0, time.UTC)
	fmt.Println(t.Format("2006-01-02 15:04"))             // layout uses the reference time
	fmt.Println(t.Format(time.RFC3339))
	ist := time.FixedZone("IST", 5*3600+1800)
	fmt.Println(t.In(ist).Format("02 Jan 2006, 3:04 PM MST"))
	d := 90 * time.Minute
	fmt.Println(d, t.Add(d).Format(time.Kitchen))
	p, err := time.Parse("2006-01-02", "2026-13-01")
	fmt.Println(p.IsZero(), err)
}

Output:

2026-10-02 09:05
2026-10-02T09:05:00Z
02 Oct 2026, 2:35 PM IST
1h30m0s 10:35AM
true parsing time "2026-13-01": month out of range

Use RFC3339 for APIs

time.RFC3339 includes the offset, so clients in any time zone interpret timestamps correctly.

त्वरित जाँच: What does the layout "2006-01-02" mean in Go?

• The date the code was written
• Year-month-day, written using the reference date
• A fixed date constant to display
• An invalid layout