Convert UTC string to time object

Question

I have this datetime, or something that looks like it.

2014-11-17 23:02:03 +0000 UTC

I want to convert this to a time object and I\'ve been

Answer 1

You are likely using the wrong layout. As explained in time.Parse, you need to specify a layout that helps Go to understand how the date passed as input is formatted.

There are predefined layouts (like the ones you were using), but none matches your input. Hence you need to define a custom layout.

A layout uses the following date as reference:

Mon Jan 2 15:04:05 MST 2006

The layout is nothing else that a representation of that date, that matches the representation of your input:

t, err := time.Parse("2006-01-02 15:04:05 -0700 MST", "2014-11-17 23:02:03 +0000 UTC")

Also remember to check err for errors. It's likely your attempts returned an error, but you didn't check it.

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "log"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    t, err := time.Parse("2006-01-02 15:04:05 -0700 UTC", "2014-11-17 23:02:03 +0000 UTC")
    if err != nil {
        log.Fatalln(err)
    }
    fmt.Println(t)
}