Time Utilities

ISO 8601 Parser

Parse or format ISO 8601 date-time strings.

What is ISO 8601?

ISO 8601 is the international standard for date and time representation. This tool converts between ISO 8601 format and other date formats.

ISO 8601 Formats

  • Date: 2024-01-15
  • Date+Time: 2024-01-15T14:30:00
  • With Timezone: 2024-01-15T14:30:00+08:00
  • UTC: 2024-01-15T06:30:00Z

Use Cases

  • API date formatting
  • Database timestamps
  • International date exchange

Frequently Asked Questions

Why is the ISO 8601 format shaped this way?
ISO 8601 puts large units first: 2026-08-30T14:30:00+08:00. Two payoffs: plain string sorting equals chronological sorting (logs and filenames order correctly), and the format is unambiguous — which made it the standard for APIs, logs, and databases.
What does the trailing Z mean?
Z is Zulu time, UTC+0: 2026-08-30T06:00:00Z and 2026-08-30T14:00:00+08:00 are the same instant. Store and transmit in UTC (Z), convert to local time only for display — the golden rule for avoiding timezone chaos.
Why does JavaScript’s toISOString() throw?
Usually the string is not ISO format (slash forms like "2026/08/30 14:00" parse inconsistently across engines), or the Date is Invalid before serialization. Validate the format with this tool first, then trace the code.