> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.alvys.com/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Timestamps

> How the Alvys API returns UTC timestamps in ISO 8601 / RFC 3339 format and when localized stop-time values with timezone offsets are used instead.

Alvys primarily uses two formats for handling date-time values in its system:

* Standard Timestamps (UTC-based):
  * Stored in [ISO 8601](https://www.iso.org/iso-8601-date-and-time-format.html) compliant [RFC 3339](https://tools.ietf.org/html/rfc3339) format using `DateTimeOffset` objects.
  * Always returned in Coordinated Universal Time (UTC).
* Localized Timestamps for Specific Use Cases
  * In some instances, such as location normalization, timestamps are returned in the local stop time of the event.
  * These timestamps include the appropriate timezone offsets to maintain accuracy.

<br />

## Examples of Date Time Conversions

<Info>
  Note

  The examples below will be in Python3 programming language, please install the following dependencies before executing the functions.

  [pytz](https://pypi.org/project/pytz/)\
  [dateutil](https://dateutil.readthedocs.io/en/stable/)\
  [datetime](https://pypi.org/project/DateTime/)
</Info>

The function below will convert the date-time in RFC 3339 format to the specified timezone.\
Function Usage: `convert\_timezone('2025-01-27T07:06:25Z', 'US/Eastern')`

```python theme={null}
def convert_timezone(time_value, target_time_zone):
    """
    Converts time in RFC 3339 format into the specified timezone.
    :param time_value: time in RFC 3339 (Example: '2020-01-27T07:06:25Z')
    :param target_time_zone: Example 'US/Central', 'US/Pacific' etc.)
    :return: converted time in string format

    Function Usage: convert_timezone('2025-01-27T07:06:25Z', 'US/Eastern')
    """
    parsed_t = dp.parse(time_value)
    time_in_seconds = parsed_t.timestamp()
    fmt = '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z%z'
    target_zone = pytz.timezone(target_time_zone)
    time_from_utc = datetime.fromtimestamp(time_in_seconds, tz=timezone.utc)
    time_from = time_from_utc.astimezone(target_zone)
    time_from.strftime(fmt)
    time_to_utc = datetime.fromtimestamp(time_in_seconds, tz=timezone.utc)
    converted_time = time_to_utc.astimezone(tz=pytz.timezone(target_time_zone))
    return converted_time
```