Time Zone API overview

The Time Zone API is a service that accepts an HTTP request of latitude/longitude coordinates and a chosen date and time. It returns the time zone data for the location, including offsets for UTC and daylight savings time.

Why use the Time Zone API

With the Time Zone API, you can develop applications that provide the time zone ID and name for dates and times at specific locations on a map. For example, you can show the following time zone data:

  • Localized time zone names for map locations from the Google Maps Platform.
  • Time zone offsets from UTC and for daylight savings.

Time zone data can be particularly useful when you want to have your website or app display time-based data relevant to your users.

What you can do with the Time Zone API

With the Time Zone API, you can request the time zone for locations on the surface of the earth, with the time offset from UTC and for daylight savings time for each of those locations.

How the Time Zone API works

The Time Zone API accepts an HTTPS request of latitude/longitude coordinates, the desired date and time as a timestamp, and optionally, a language code. It returns data in the format specified by the request. The following example shows a request for Nevada, USA, with a requested output in JSON.

 https://maps.googleapis.com/maps/api/timezone/json
    ?location=39.6034810%2C-119.6822510
    &timestamp=1331161200
    &key=YOUR_API_KEY

Resources

The following table summarizes the resources available through the Time Zone API along with the data it returns.

Data resources Data returned Return format
Timezone

You provide your request along with location and timestamp. See required parameters.

  • Time zone ID.
  • Time zone name, optionally localized
  • Offset from UTC, in seconds
  • Offset for DST, in seconds
  • See Time Zone for specific response examples.
  • JSON
  • XML

How to use the Time Zone API

1 Get set up Start with Set up your Google Cloud project and complete the setup instructions that follow.
2 Try a timezone request Once you have an API key, you can start testing out the Time Zone API directly from your browser. See Time Zone examples in the Timezone requests and responses guide for details.
3 Understand response basics Explore how to use timezone data in your app or website. See Time Zone responses for details.
5 Incorporate timezone data into your own app! You can use timezone data to enhance apps and websites for users across different time-based locales.

Available client libraries

Call this API in the language of your choice through one of the following client libraries:

The Java Client, Python Client, Go Client and Node.js Client for Google Maps Services are community-supported client libraries, open sourced under the Apache 2.0 License. Download them from GitHub, where you can also find installation instructions and sample code.

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