Time Zone requests and responses

Time Zone

Time Zone API requests are constructed as a URL string. The API returns time zone data for a point on the earth, specified by a latitude/longitude pair. Note that time zone data may not be available for locations over water, such as oceans or seas.

A Time Zone request takes the following form:

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/outputFormat?parameters

where outputFormat may be either of the following values:

json (recommended), indicates output in JavaScript Object Notation (JSON); or
xml, indicates output in XML, wrapped within a <TimeZoneResponse> node.

Note: URLs must be properly encoded to be valid and are limited to 16384 characters for all web services. Be aware of this limit when constructing your URLs. Note that different browsers, proxies, and servers may have different URL character limits as well.

Required parameters

location
A comma-separated latitude,longitude tuple, location=39.6034810,-119.6822510, representing the location to look up.
timestamp
The desired time as seconds since midnight, January 1, 1970 UTC. The Time Zone API uses the timestamp to determine whether or not Daylight Savings should be applied, based on the time zone of the location.
Note that the API does not take historical time zones into account. That is, if you specify a past timestamp, the API does not take into account the possibility that the location was previously in a different time zone.

Optional parameters

language
The language in which to return results.
- See the list of supported languages. Google often updates the supported languages, so this list may not be exhaustive.
- If language is not supplied, the API attempts to use the preferred language as specified in the Accept-Language header.
- The API does its best to provide a street address that is readable for both the user and locals. To achieve that goal, it returns street addresses in the local language, transliterated to a script readable by the user if necessary, observing the preferred language. All other addresses are returned in the preferred language. Address components are all returned in the same language, which is chosen from the first component.
- If a name is not available in the preferred language, the API uses the closest match.
- The preferred language has a small influence on the set of results that the API chooses to return, and the order in which they are returned. The geocoder interprets abbreviations differently depending on language, such as the abbreviations for street types, or synonyms that may be valid in one language but not in another. For example, utca and tér are synonyms for street in Hungarian.

Time Zone examples

This section includes some sample queries that demonstrate features of the API.

The below query performs a time zone request for Nevada, USA. The timestamp is set to March 8th, 2012.

URL

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json
  ?location=39.6034810%2C-119.6822510
  &timestamp=1331161200
  &key=YOUR_API_KEY

cURL

curl -L -X GET 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?location=39.6034810%2C-119.6822510&timestamp=1331161200&key=YOUR_API_KEY'

JSON

{
  "dstOffset": 0,
  "rawOffset": -28800,
  "status": "OK",
  "timeZoneId": "America/Los_Angeles",
  "timeZoneName": "Pacific Standard Time",
}

XML

<TimeZoneResponse>
 <status>OK</status>
 <raw_offset>-28800.0000000</raw_offset>
 <dst_offset>0.0000000</dst_offset>
 <time_zone_id>America/Los_Angeles</time_zone_id>
 <time_zone_name>Pacific Standard Time</time_zone_name>
</TimeZoneResponse>

The below query performs a time zone request for Nevada, USA. The location is the same as the above request, but the timestamp is set to March 15th, 2012. The response now includes a Daylight Savings Time offset.

URL

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json
  ?location=39.6034810%2C-119.6822510
  &timestamp=1331766000
  &key=YOUR_API_KEY

cURL

curl -L -X GET 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?location=39.6034810%2C-119.6822510&timestamp=1331766000&key=YOUR_API_KEY'

JSON

{
  "dstOffset": 3600,
  "rawOffset": -28800,
  "status": "OK",
  "timeZoneId": "America/Los_Angeles",
  "timeZoneName": "Pacific Daylight Time",
}

XML

<TimeZoneResponse>
 <status>OK</status>
 <raw_offset>-28800.0000000</raw_offset>
 <dst_offset>3600.0000000</dst_offset>
 <time_zone_id>America/Los_Angeles</time_zone_id>
 <time_zone_name>Pacific Daylight Time</time_zone_name>
</TimeZoneResponse>

This example is similar to the above two, but sets a language parameter. The response will now be localized to Spanish.

URL

https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json
  ?language=es
  &location=39.6034810%2C-119.6822510
  &timestamp=1331766000
  &key=YOUR_API_KEY

cURL

curl -L -X GET 'https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json?location=39.6034810%2C-119.6822510&timestamp=1331766000&language=es&key=YOUR_API_KEY'

JSON

{
  "dstOffset": 3600,
  "rawOffset": -28800,
  "status": "OK",
  "timeZoneId": "America/Los_Angeles",
  "timeZoneName": "hora de verano del Pacífico",
}

XML

<TimeZoneResponse>
 <status>OK</status>
 <raw_offset>-28800.0000000</raw_offset>
 <dst_offset>3600.0000000</dst_offset>
 <time_zone_id>America/Los_Angeles</time_zone_id>
 <time_zone_name>hora de verano del Pacífico</time_zone_name>
</TimeZoneResponse>

Time Zone responses

For each valid request, the Time Zone returns a response in the format indicated within the request URL.

TimeZoneResponse

Field	Required	Type	Description
`status`	required	TimeZoneStatus	See TimeZoneStatus for more information.
`dstOffset`	optional	number	The offset for daylight-savings time in seconds. This will be zero if the time zone is not in Daylight Savings Time during the specified `timestamp`.
`errorMessage`	optional	string	Detailed information about the reasons behind the given status code. Included if status other than `Ok`.
`rawOffset`	optional	number	The offset from UTC (in seconds) for the given location. This does not take into effect daylight savings.
`timeZoneId`	optional	string	a string containing the ID of the time zone, such as "America/Los_Angeles" or "Australia/Sydney". These IDs are defined by Unicode Common Locale Data Repository (CLDR) project, and currently available in file timezone.xml. When a timezone has several IDs, the canonical one is returned. In xml responses, this is the first alias of each timezone. For example, "Asia/Calcutta" is returned, not "Asia/Kolkata".
`timeZoneName`	optional	string	The long form name of the time zone. This field will be localized if the language parameter is set. eg. `Pacific Daylight Time` or `Australian Eastern Daylight Time`.

TimeZoneStatus

The status field within the Time Zone response object contains the status of the request. The status field may contain the following values:

OK indicates that the request was successful.
INVALID_REQUEST indicates that the request was malformed.
OVER_DAILY_LIMIT indicates any of the following:
- The API key is missing or invalid.
- Billing has not been enabled on your account.
- A self-imposed usage cap has been exceeded.
- The provided method of payment is no longer valid (for example, a credit card has expired).
OVER_QUERY_LIMIT indicates the requestor has exceeded quota.
REQUEST_DENIED indicates that the API did not complete the request. Confirm that the request was sent over HTTPS instead of HTTP.
UNKNOWN_ERROR indicates an unknown error.
ZERO_RESULTS indicates that no time zone data could be found for the specified position or time. Confirm that the request is for a location on land, and not over water.

Calculating the local time

The local time of a given location is the sum of the timestamp parameter, and the dstOffset and rawOffset fields from the result.

Time Zone requests and responses

Time Zone

Required parameters

location

timestamp

Optional parameters

language

Time Zone examples

URL

cURL

JSON

XML

URL

cURL

JSON

XML

URL

cURL

JSON

XML

Time Zone responses

TimeZoneResponse

`status`

`dstOffset`

`errorMessage`

`rawOffset`

`timeZoneId`

`timeZoneName`

TimeZoneStatus

Calculating the local time