Current situation

Currently we have different type of date field handling:

• in database, store date as text

• in xml, year only, month, date and dateTime are supported and valid.

• in the index, some dates are stored as defined in the XML (https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/blob/develop/schemas/iso19139/src/main/plugin/iso19139/index-fields/default.xsl#L885), some expanded to be date time and adapted to UTC (eg. temporalExtent) See https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/blob/develop/domain/src/main/java/org/fao/geonet/domain/ISODate.java#L196

This may introduce issues in:

1. date comparison (in harvesters)

2. date display in record view (may be in UTC instead of original date) eg. setting start of temporal extent to 2012/01/01 (on a server with CEST) will be displayed to 2011/31/12 because adjusted to UTC timezone

Improvements

• DB settings to set the server timezone Harvester timezone setting #4576

• Code / Replace Joda lib by Java 8 API to simplify source code (Add timezone support #5061)

Note that from Java SE 8 onwards, users are asked to migrate to java.time (JSR-310) -
a core part of the JDK which replaces this project.

• DB / Create date in a specific timezone using current date type (eg. UTC) eg. when creating new record, set created date https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/blob/develop/core/src/main/java/org/fao/geonet/kernel/DataManager.java#L1486)

• Index / Index date field for query using a specific timezone and dateTime format (for search and comparison) and store the value to render in a dedicated field (eg. a year should not be displayed as datetime)

• Index / If a date as no timezone, consider it as using the server setting timezone

• DB / Migration script

• UI settings to set the user timezone or (by default) use the browser timezone

• Editor / Add the capability to set date timezone

• Code / Update moment.js lib to latest version and use utcOffset to fix current shift to UTC (issue 2) (https://github.com/geonetwork/core-geonetwork/blob/develop/web-ui/src/main/resources/catalog/components/utility/UtilityDirective.js#L361)

                date = moment(originalDate, 'YYYY-MM-DDtHH-mm-SSSZ').utcOffset('+0100');

• Code / Update harvester code for date comparison

Future work

• DB / Analyse if we can switch to the database date type ?

Reference documents:

• Java 8 API: https://dzone.com/articles/deeper-look-java-8-date-and