created_at and updated_at times don't include timezone

[Steve McLellan]

created_at and updated_at were recently added to the API calls and notifications for many neutron resources (networks, subnets, ports, possibly more), which is awesome! I've noticed that the times don't include a timezone (compare to nova servers and glance images, for instance).

Even if there's an assumption a user can make, this can create problems with some display tools (I noticed this because a javascript date formatting filter does local timezone conversions when a timezone is created, which meant times for resources created seconds apart looked as though they were several hours adrift.

Tested on neutron mitaka RC1.

[Armando Migliaccio (armando-migliaccio)]

AFAIK the time reported is UTC, you can convert it to local time if need be.

[Armando Migliaccio (armando-migliaccio)]

https://github.com/openstack/neutron/blob/master/neutron/services/timestamp/timestamp_db.py#L107
https://github.com/openstack/neutron/blob/master/neutron/services/timestamp/timestamp_db.py#L34

[Steve McLellan (sjmc7)]

Thanks Armando - the AFAIK is the problem; consuming code can't/won't necessarily make this assumption (many code libraries will assume timezone-less values to be in local timezone). In our case we can do the conversion ourselves, but for consistency with other services it would be nice to include it even if it means always appending a 'Z'.

[Armando Migliaccio (armando-migliaccio)]

If there's a gap in the documentation we can plug it, that said, if we want to be more explicit about the expression of UTC/Zulu time zone this can be treated as a simple bug fix and patch the timestamp_db file directly. Would that solve your concern?

[Steve McLellan (sjmc7)]

I would prefer to have the timezone explicit, but if the answer is that consumers should assume timestamps are in UTC, I can live with that and we'll make the change on our end.

[Launchpad Janitor (janitor)]

[Expired for neutron because there has been no activity for 60 days.]

[Ihar Hrachyshka (ihar-hrachyshka)]

I guess the problem here is that we can't change the format now that we released the extension. We will need to live with it until we eg. implement microversioning that would allow us to apply such a change to new versions of the API.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: master
Review: https://review.openstack.org/368682

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/368682
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/neutron/commit/?id=424a633fd985ad517a06dee1aeec805702d2e576
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: master

commit 424a633fd985ad517a06dee1aeec805702d2e576
Author: Kevin Benton <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Sep 9 06:20:40 2016 -0700

    Include timezone in timestamp fields

    The Neutron 'created_at'/'updated_at' fields on API resources
    were inconsistent with other OpenStack projects because we did
    not include timezone information. This patch addressed that
    problem by adding the zulu time indicator onto the end of the
    fields.

    Because this could break clients expecting no timezone, this patch
    also eliminates the 'timestamp_core' and 'timestamp_ext' extensions
    and consolidates them into a new 'timestamp' extension. This makes
    the change discoverable via the API.

    This is assuming the current API development paradigm where
    extensions can come and go depending on the deployment and the client
    is expected to handle this by checking the loaded extensions.
    Once we decide extensions are permanent, this type of change will
    no longer be possible.

    Even though this is being proposed late in the cycle, it is better
    to get this change in before the release where we expose even more
    resources with incorrectly formatted timestamps.

    APIImpact
    Closes-Bug: #1561200
    Change-Id: I2ee2ed4c713d88345adc55b022feb95653eec663

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Fix proposed to branch: stable/newton
Review: https://review.openstack.org/371751

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

Reviewed: https://review.openstack.org/371751
Committed: https://git.openstack.org/cgit/openstack/neutron/commit/?id=8133f6e385b92c581974cfe3b4fb8fec19d716a4
Submitter: Jenkins
Branch: stable/newton

commit 8133f6e385b92c581974cfe3b4fb8fec19d716a4
Author: Kevin Benton <email address hidden>
Date: Fri Sep 9 06:20:40 2016 -0700

    Include timezone in timestamp fields

    The Neutron 'created_at'/'updated_at' fields on API resources
    were inconsistent with other OpenStack projects because we did
    not include timezone information. This patch addressed that
    problem by adding the zulu time indicator onto the end of the
    fields.

    Because this could break clients expecting no timezone, this patch
    also eliminates the 'timestamp_core' and 'timestamp_ext' extensions
    and consolidates them into a new 'timestamp' extension. This makes
    the change discoverable via the API.

    This is assuming the current API development paradigm where
    extensions can come and go depending on the deployment and the client
    is expected to handle this by checking the loaded extensions.
    Once we decide extensions are permanent, this type of change will
    no longer be possible.

    Even though this is being proposed late in the cycle, it is better
    to get this change in before the release where we expose even more
    resources with incorrectly formatted timestamps.

    (cherry picked from commit 424a633fd985ad517a06dee1aeec805702d2e576)

    APIImpact
    Closes-Bug: #1561200
    Change-Id: I2ee2ed4c713d88345adc55b022feb95653eec663

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

This issue was fixed in the openstack/neutron 9.0.0.0rc2 release candidate.

[OpenStack Infra (hudson-openstack)]

This issue was fixed in the openstack/neutron 10.0.0.0b1 development milestone.