When visualizing data through time, you must specify the field that contains the time stamps. These time stamps can be stored in date, string, or numeric field types. For best performance, it is recommended that you store your time stamps in a date field type.
You can choose to convert the string or numeric fields containing time stamps to a date field using the Convert Time Field tool. This tool allows you to convert time stamps stored in a variety of formats and store those into a date field.
Learn more about converting time values stored in a string or numeric field into a date field
If you want to use the time stamps stored in a string or numeric field type, you must determine the supported date format (see list below) and store the time stamps in your data based on one of these formats.
Supported string field formats
- YYYY
- YYYYMM
- YYYY/MM
- YYYY-MM
- YYYYMMDD
- YYYY/MM/DD
- YYYY-MM-DD
- YYYYMMDDhhmmss
- YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss
- YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss
- YYYYMMDDhhmmss.s
- YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss.s
- YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss.s
- YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.s
Supported numeric field formats
- YYYY
- YYYYMM
- YYYYMMDD
- YYYYMMDDhhmmss
where
- YYYY = four-digit year
- MM = two-digit month (01=January)
- DD = two-digit day of month (01 through 31)
- hh = two digits of hour (00 through 23) (A.M./P.M. not allowed)
- mm = two digits of minute (00 through 59)
- ss = two digits of second (00 through 59)
- s = one digit of millisecond (0 through 9)
Tip:
For temporal data with subsecond granularity, you can choose to store your time stamps in one of the following formats: YYYYMMDDhhmmss.s, YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss.s, YYYY/MM/DD hh:mm:ss.s, or YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ss.s. Using this format, you can store time values that represent 1/1,000th of a second (1 millisecond), 1/100th of a second, or 1/10th of a second. For example, if you want to visualize data every millisecond, you can store the time value as 200911231030.560. In this case, the data will draw at the 560th millisecond (for the time 200911231030) when visualizing it with the time slider.