⌚ Unix time in Go [cheatsheet]

July 18, 2022 cheatsheet time

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The time package in Go contains convenient functions for operating on Unix time (also known as Epoch time, Posix time, seconds since the Epoch, or UNIX Epoch time). Using them, you can easily get the current Unix timestamp, convert a time.Time struct to Unix time, and vice versa - Unix timestamp to time.Time. Check out this cheatsheet to learn how to do it and come back to it whenever you forget 😉

Convert date/time to Unix epoch time

The time.Time struct contains Unix(), UnixMilli(), UnixMicro() and UnixNano() methods for converting a time object to a Unix timestamp of type int64.

date := time.Date(2022, 6, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, time.UTC)
fmt.Println(date.Unix())
fmt.Println(date.UnixMilli())
fmt.Println(date.UnixMicro())
fmt.Println(date.UnixNano())

Output:

1654041600
1654041600000
1654041600000000
1654041600000000000

Get current Unix timestamp

To get the current Unix timestamp in Go, you just need to get the current time of type time.Time using the time.Now() function and convert it to Unix timestamp using Unix(), UnixMilli(), UnixMicro(), or UnixNano() method.

Get current Unix/Epoch time in seconds

fmt.Println(time.Now().Unix())

Output:

1657861095

Get current Unix/Epoch time in milliseconds

fmt.Println(time.Now().UnixMilli())

Output:

1657861095093

Get current Unix/Epoch time in microseconds

fmt.Println(time.Now().UnixMicro())

Output:

1657861095093115

Get current Unix/Epoch time in nanoseconds

fmt.Println(time.Now().UnixNano())

Output:

1657861095093117000

Convert Unix timestamp to `time.Time`

The time package has three functions to convert from an int64 Unix timestamp to a time.Time object:

Unix(sec int64, nsec int64) Time to convert a seconds timestamp, a nanoseconds timestamp, or timestamp with a seconds and nanoseconds part to a time.Time object.
UnixMilli(msec int64) Time to convert from a millisecond timestamp to a time.Time.
UnixMicro(usec int64) Time to convert a microsecond timestamp to a time.Time struct.

Second Unix timestamp to `time.Time`

var timestamp int64 = 1657861095

t := time.Unix(timestamp, 0)
fmt.Println(t.UTC())

Output:

2022-07-15 04:58:15 +0000 UTC

Millisecond Unix timestamp to `time.Time`

var timestamp int64 = 1657861095093

t := time.UnixMilli(timestamp)
fmt.Println(t.UTC())

Output:

2022-07-15 04:58:15.093 +0000 UTC

Microsecond Unix timestamp to `time.Time`

var timestamp int64 = 1657861095093115

t := time.UnixMicro(timestamp)
fmt.Println(t.UTC())

Output:

2022-07-15 04:58:15.093115 +0000 UTC

Nanosecond Unix timestamp to `time.Time`

var timestamp int64 = 1657861095093117123

t := time.Unix(0, timestamp)
fmt.Println(t.UTC())

Output:

2022-07-15 04:58:15.093117123 +0000 UTC

Parse Unix timestamp from string to `time.Time`

To parse a string Unix timestamp and get a time.Time object, you must first convert the timestamp from string to int64, and then convert it to time.Time using the Unix(), UnixMilli(), or UnixMicro() function.

timeString := "1657861095"
timestamp, err := strconv.ParseInt(timeString, 10, 64)
if err != nil {
    panic(err)
}
t := time.Unix(timestamp, 0)
fmt.Println(t.UTC())

Output:

2022-07-15 04:58:15 +0000 UTC

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