formatDate() in data-api-client depends on system timezone

I had a problem with inserting values with the timestamp mysql data type. Javascript Date object 2020-05-28T03:56:48.466Z was being transformed to "2020-05-28 05:56:48". (I am in UTC+2 timezone. Server uses UTC, however I encountered this issue during local development.)

Then I tried running the script with

$ TZ='UTC' node somescript.js

and 2020-05-28T03:56:48.466Z was correctly transformed to "2020-05-28 03:56:48".

I think the problem might be that aws-sdk does not communicate my system timezone to Aurora Data API and expects UTC.

Related source code: https://github.com/ArsenyYankovsky/data-api-client/blob/support-date/index.js#L189

const formatDate = (date) => {
    const padNumber = (number) => number <= 9 ? '0' + number : number


    const year = date.getFullYear()
    const month = date.getMonth() + 1
    const day = date.getDate()

    const hour = date.getHours()
    const minutes = date.getMinutes()
    const seconds = date.getSeconds()

    return year + '-' + padNumber(month) + '-' + padNumber(day) + ' ' + padNumber(hour) + ':' + padNumber(minutes) + ':' + padNumber(seconds)
  }

Expected: timestamp string sent to Data API should be in UTC and not be related to system timezone.

Suggested fix: use UTC variants of Date methods like Date.prototype.getUTCHours()

Thanks for this amazing library!

[ArsenyYankovsky]

I’ll definitely check it out and let you know. I don’t immediately see any issues with it, but I’ll run some tests and if everything go well publish a new version.

[filipsuk]

Thank you so much @ArsenyYankovsky 👍. I will give it a try.