While dealing with OData JSON format, sometimes users come across a number in following shape – 1532696073 – which is confusing as they are expecting a date/timestamp. This is Epoch/Unix/POSIX time format which is an alternate approach to display date and time.

This timestamp reflects the number of seconds passed since the timestamp January 01/1970 – 00h:00m:00s. Hence 1532696073 means (GMT) July 27, 2018 12:54:33 PM.

Fun fact: Any system using Unix Time assigned 32-bit number will suffer a Y2K moment at 3:14:08 on 19 January 2038 UTC when the time will be out of bits. This scary moment is called Y2038 moment. Most embedded systems running on 32-bit chips will be extremely vulnerable to this problem.

Also, for time-space nitpickers, this system consider a day to be uniform – 24 hours of 60 minutes having 60 seconds each. Any question of leap seconds can be deemed unnecessary.

~S