Date Format Conversion in Go

In the realm of Go programming, the conversion of date formats is a common task. One may encounter the need to transform dates from one format to another, such as converting "2010-01-23 11:44:20" to "Jan 23 '10 at 11:44."

To achieve this conversion, leverage the time package's Parse and Format functions.

Using Parse and Format

The Parse function takes a reference time (e.g., "2006-01-02 15:04:05") and a date string in the format you want to convert from. This format acts as a template to decode the input string into a time.Time object.

The Format function does the opposite. It takes a time.Time object and a reference time as parameters and returns a string representing the time in the specified format.

Example Code

Below is an example code to convert the date string "2010-01-23 11:44:20" to "Jan 23 '10 at 11:44":

package main

import (
    "fmt"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    dtstr1 := "2010-01-23 11:44:20"
    dt, err := time.Parse("2006-01-02 15:04:05", dtstr1)
    if err == nil {
        dtstr2 := dt.Format("Jan 2 '06 at 15:04")
        fmt.Println(dtstr2) // Output: Jan 23 '10 at 11:44
    } else {
        fmt.Println(err)
    }
}

This code will print the converted date string "Jan 23 '10 at 11:44" to the console.