Dates & Time Zones

Learn how Noloco handles date fields and timezones

In Noloco there are three ways to setup a date field, whether it's coming from Noloco, Airtable, Google Sheets, Xano or anywhere else.

Date & Time

A date and time field lets you save a date and a time. The app user will always be shown the date and time in their local timezone. So if someone chooses 12 June 2023 at 2pm while in New York, someone in Dublin would see 12 June 2023 at 7pm (because of the 5 hours time difference) This is usually how you want to store dates and times, as it allows your users to always pick the correct time relative to them.

Date and Time Fields with consistent time zone

There are times when you want to choose the date and time with a consistent timezone, usually if the time shown needs to be shown in local time. For example, when you are looking at flight information, usually take-off and landing are in local times (local to the airport). However, something like a meeting time should rarely be shown in this format, particularly if participants can join the meeting remotely from anywhere in the world.

To choose a field like this, enable Use a consistent time zone. This will always display your dates in the GMT / UTC timezone regardless of the users location. To use the same example as above, if someone chooses 12 June 2023 at 2pm while in New York, someone in Dublin would also see 12 June 2023 at 2pm (despite the 5 hours time difference)

Date Fields

The last type of Date field is a field that only represents a date, with no time. The fields don't have a timezone, because a date is a date regardless of where you are in the world. For example, a birthday on May 12th is always May 12th. It's not May 11th at 18:00 just because you're in San Fransico. You should use these fields for Date's of Birth, All day events, like a Conference start and end date, a project kickoff date etc.

When used in a form in your app, the user will see a date picker without the ability to set the time.

Date Formats

When you're in the app your date's and times will always be formatted according to your Brower's language settings (your locale). This allows Noloco to personalize your dates to your preference. For example, May 12th 2023 will be shown as

• 05/12/2023 when in the USA

• 12/05/2023 when in Ireland or the UK

• 12.05.2023 when in Germany

• ...etc

Similarly, times are also localized to your own locale

• 05:15 PM when in the USA

• 17:15 when in Europe (etc..)

You don't need to adjust these formats as they will always be formatted in the user's preferred format (according to their own language settings)