[ZEPPELIN-3872] Notebook REST API should return timestamp related information in UTC or Unix Epoch

• Type: Bug
• Status: Open
• Priority: Critical
• Resolution: Unresolved
• Affects Version/s: 0.8.0
• Component/s: rest-api, zeppelin-server
• Assignee: Unassigned
• Reporter: Alok
• Created: 20/Nov/18 03:08
• Updated: 18/Sep/23 02:05

Description

Notebook related REST APIs return timestamp information in local timezone. (i.e. timezone of the host machine running the zeppelin server where the notebook's session is active). 

https://zeppelin.apache.org/docs/0.7.0/rest-api/rest-notebook.html

Timestamp information in the return payload of most of the GET APIs is all local time.

Example - 

• [[http://[zeppelin-server]:[zeppelin-port]/api/notebook/[noteId]

dateCreated": "Feb 10, 2015 1:53:02 AM", "dateStarted": "Jul 3, 2015 1:43:17 PM", "dateFinished": "Jul 3, 2015 1:43:23 PM", "dateUpdated": "Jul 2, 2015 1:43:23 PM"

• [http://[zeppelin-server]:[zeppelin-port]/api/notebook/[noteId]/paragraph/[paragraphId]

"dateUpdated": "Jul 2, 2015 1:43:23 PM"

 

Any consumer of the Rest APIs has no way to know how to interpret this timestamp information since it is purely local time information of the Zeppelin host. There is no mention of a timezone - that would have allowed the consumer to possibly interpret the timestamp in whatever timezone it needs. 

The correct and industry standard way to do this would be to return the timestamp information for all the Zeppelin Notebook Rest APIs as either

1. UTC time

or

1. Unix EPOCH time (in milliseconds)

This allows consumers to easily interpret the timestamp information and convert it to whatever timezone they need it in.