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‘Date’ and ‘Time’ fields come with multiple behaviour and format options. Understanding which to use in different scenarios is key to achieving synergy with users and integrations.
Let’s have a look at the different behaviours available:
User Local
The alert explains that the field will expose this data according to your own personal time-zone settings. The value is stored as UTC in the backend and exposed after conversion.
Date Only
This time the field will only display the date input, and that the time recorded in the backend will always be midnight (12:00 AM). Once ‘Date Only’ is chosen, you may not change the behaviour in the future.
Time-Zone Independent
Any data input here is static, and it will be stored as it is entered and will not be subject to any conversion. Once ‘Time-Zone Independent’ is chosen, you may not change the behaviour in the future.
Once you have selected your behaviour, you will need to decide on the format of the field. For both User Local and Time-Zone Independent you will have the options of ‘Date Only’ or ‘Date and Time’. If you have chosen ‘Date Only’ for the behaviour, ‘Date Only’ for format type will be enforced.
Date and Field Examples
With a Personal Time-Zone of GMT 00:00, the dates are all stored as 05/10/2022.
Any ‘Time’ field is completed with 18:30.
With a Personal Time-Zone of GMT -08:00, the Dates on the ‘User Local Date Only’ field is affected because the field is stored as 05/10/22 Midnight UTC.
The time is affected on the ‘User Local Date’ and ‘Time’ field since 18:30 – 8 hours is 11:30.
With a Personal Time-Zone of GMT + 08:00, the only field affected is ‘User Local Date’ and ‘Time’. In this example, both the date and time are affected since 18:30 + 8 hours is during the day ahead at 02:30 AM.
The ‘User Local Date’ field is unchanged as Midnight + 8 hours is the same day.
We can see that utilising the User Local behaviour means we need to be wary of what personal Time-Zones our users are set to, and whether this could have any knock-on effects with regards to how they are going to use this field.
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