How Can I Customize JSON Timestamp Output in Go?

Customizing JSON Output for Timestamps

Serializing Go structures with custom date formats can be achieved by tailoring the encoding process for specific data types. In the case of timestamps, the time.Time type's default JSON representation often doesn't meet desired formatting requirements.

To address this, you can wrap time.Time in a custom data type that implements the json.Marshaler interface. This interface defines a MarshalJSON method, which enables you to define how the type should be represented in JSON.

For example:

type JSONTime time.Time

func (t JSONTime) MarshalJSON() ([]byte, error) {
    // Convert the timestamp to the desired format
    stamp := fmt.Sprintf("\"%s\"", time.Time(t).Format("Mon Jan _2"))
    return []byte(stamp), nil
}

In your Document structure, update the Stamp field to use JSONTime instead of time.Time:

type Document struct {
    Name        string
    Content     string
    Stamp       JSONTime
    Author      string
}

When you encode a Document using json.Marshal or json.NewEncoder, the Stamp field will be serialized in your custom format. For example, instead of "2014-05-16T08:28:06.801064-04:00", you might get "May 15, 2014".

This approach provides greater flexibility in controlling how timestamps are represented in JSON, allowing you to adapt them to specific requirements for display or data exchange.

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