What is the best way to deal with Date in iOS / Android and Firebase?

user_3254526 0
Viewed 1575

I'm developing two native apps in android and iOS (swift3) and some of my classes use Date object, but when I save a Date object from android into Firebase Realtime Database the structure is something like this:

creationDate: { date: 3 day: 2 hours: 17 minutes: 27 month: 9 seconds: 43 time: 1507062463000 timezoneOffset: 180 year: 117 }

But this is not a common structure in iOS (by my searches off course).

What is a better solution:

  1. Create a encoder/decoder in iOS to read and write this structure?
  2. Change read and write in android to save in firebase with iso date? Something like this (yyyy-MM-dd'T'HH:mm:ss.SSSZZZZZ)

Thanks

swift3 firebase android ios java
3 Answers

I recommend using FIRServerValue.timestamp(). This will ensure that a Firebase Server timestamp will be used when the data is saved to the database, that is the most accurate time because it can't be tampered by a user, and will be exactly the same across iOS and Android.

The data saved is the number of milliseconds since 1970, which you can easily convert into a date object.

For example (Swift):

myRef.setValue(FIRServerValue.timestamp())

Edit: Firebase 4

myRef.setValue(ServerValue.timestamp())
user_32611610

For iOS Use this

For saving Current time to firebase database I use Unic Epoch Conversation:

let timestamp = NSDate().timeIntervalSince1970

and For Decoding Unix Epoch time to Date().

let myTimeInterval = TimeInterval(timestamp)
let time = NSDate(timeIntervalSince1970: TimeInterval(myTimeInterval))
user_73343860

You should use a timestamp (number of seconds since the Unix Epoch on January 1st, 1970 at UTC) :

iOS (Swift) 

// Get current timestamp
let currentTimestamp = NSDate().timeIntervalSince1970

// Get date from timestamp
let date = NSDate(timeIntervalSince1970: TimeInterval(TimeInterval(yourTimestamp)))

android (Kotlin) (Take care, in android the timestamp is in milliseconds)

// Get current timestamp
val currentTimestamp = System.currentTimeMillis() / 1000 // We want timestamp in seconds

// Get date from timestamp
val date = Date(yourTimestamp * 1000) // Timestamp must be in ms to be converted to Date
user_46148070
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