When developing client systems for the Ed-Fi API, you should be aware of how the platform handles dates and datetime values.
When working with datetime elements, the API has the following behavior:
- On data in, clients should send datetime values in ISO-8601 format with a time zone designator (e.g., 2019-12-30T11:55:26Z). This can include an offset or can be expressed in UTC (i.e., with a zero offset). This approach avoids any ambiguity around the time zone. If the client system omits any precision information (which is allowable under ISO-8601), UTC is assumed.
- Data in the Ed-Fi ODS / API platform is stored as UTC.
- Data is provided to clients in ISO-8601 UTC format.
When working with date fields, the API has the following behavior:
- The API rejects input if a datetime value is provided to a date-only element.
- The API only returns a date-part for date elements.