How to Convert Milliseconds to time.Time in Golang

In Go (Golang), handling time in milliseconds is a common requirement, especially when interacting with systems or data that represent time as milliseconds since the Unix epoch (January 1, 1970). This article provides a comprehensive guide on converting milliseconds to Go's time.Time type and vice versa, ensuring precision and ease in your time manipulations.

Converting Milliseconds to time.Time

To convert milliseconds since the Unix epoch to a time.Time object in Go, you can use the time.Unix function. This function accepts two parameters: seconds and nanoseconds. Since 1 millisecond equals 1,000,000 nanoseconds, you can calculate the seconds and remaining nanoseconds from the milliseconds value.

Here's how you can perform the conversion:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    // Milliseconds since Unix epoch
    millis := int64(1610000000000)

    // Convert milliseconds to time.Time
    t := time.Unix(0, millis*int64(time.Millisecond))

    fmt.Println("Converted time:", t)
}

Explanation

• millis*int64(time.Millisecond) converts milliseconds to nanoseconds.
• time.Unix(0, nanoseconds) creates a time.Time object corresponding to the given nanoseconds since the Unix epoch. Starting from Go version 1.17, the standard library introduced the time.UnixMilli function, which simplifies this conversion:

t := time.UnixMilli(millis)

This function directly returns a time.Time object corresponding to the provided milliseconds since the Unix epoch.

Converting time.Time to Milliseconds

If you have a time.Time object and need to obtain the milliseconds since the Unix epoch, you can use the UnixMilli method:

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    // Current time
    t := time.Now()

    // Convert time.Time to milliseconds since Unix epoch
    millis := t.UnixMilli()

    fmt.Println("Milliseconds since epoch:", millis)
}

Handling JSON with Milliseconds

Then working with JSON data that includes timestamps in milliseconds, you can define your struct to unmarshal the milliseconds into an int64 field and then convert it to time.Time.

package main

import (
    "encoding/json"
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

type Event struct {
    Name      string `json:"name"`
    Timestamp int64  `json:"timestamp"`
}

func (e *Event) Time() time.Time {
    return time.UnixMilli(e.Timestamp)
}

func main() {
    data := []byte(`{"name": "Sample Event", "timestamp": 1610000000000}`)

    var event Event
    if err := json.Unmarshal(data, &event); err != nil {
        fmt.Println("Error:", err)
        return
    }

    fmt.Println("Event Name:", event.Name)
    fmt.Println("Event Time:", event.Time())
}

Conclusion

Converting between milliseconds and time.Time in Go is straightforward, especially with the enhancements introduced in Go 1.17. By utilizing functions like time.UnixMilli and methods like UnixMilli, you can handle time conversions efficiently and accurately.

For more detailed information, you can refer to the Go documentation on the time package.

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