Help Center/ Log Tank Service/ Best Practices/ Log Jobs (Beta)/ Processing Date and Time Using DSL Processing Functions/ Conversion Between Datetime Strings and Unix Timestamps
Updated on 2026-05-12 GMT+08:00
View PDF
Share

Conversion Between Datetime Strings and Unix Timestamps

  1. Processing functions
    • Intelligent conversion function dt_str: converts a Unix timestamp, datetime object, or datetime string to a datetime string in a specified format.
    • Dedicated function dt_strftimestamp: specifically converts a Unix timestamp to a datetime string.
    • Intelligent conversion function dt_parsetimestamp: converts a datetime string or datetime object to a Unix timestamp.
  2. Scenario 1: converting a datetime string without a time zone to a Unix timestamp

    To convert a datetime string without time zone information (for example, 2019-06-02 18:41:26) to a Unix timestamp, you must specify a time zone for the date and time. The resulting value will vary depending on the time zone provided.

    • Raw log 
      {
    "time": "2019-07-10 14:58:19"
}
    • Processing rule 
      e_set("Shanghai_timestamp", dt_parsetimestamp(v("time"), tz="Asia/Shanghai"))
e_set("Los_Angeles_timestamp", dt_parsetimestamp(v("time"), tz="America/Los_Angeles"))
e_set("UTC_timestamp", dt_parsetimestamp(v("time")))
    • Processing result 
      {
"time": "2019-07-10 14:58:19",
"Shanghai_timestamp": 1562741899,
"Los_Angeles_timestamp": 1562795899,
"UTC_timestamp": 1562770699
}
  3. Scenario 2: converting a non-standard custom date format without a time zone to a Unix timestamp
    • Raw log 
      {
    "time1" : "2019-07-10 06:58:19",
    "time2": "2019/07/10 06-58-19"
}
    • Processing rule 
      e_set("time3", dt_parsetimestamp(v("time1")))   
e_set("time4", dt_parsetimestamp(dt_strptime(v("time2"), "%Y/%m/%d %H-%M-%S")))
    • Processing result 
      {
	"time1": "2019-07-10 06:58:19",
	"time2": "2019/07/10 06-58-19",
	"time3": 1562741899,
	"time4": 1562741899
}