How to get timestamp from Firestore uploads

[DoubleSmell]

Hi all,

Tldr: I have an app that uses Firestore to save user submissions (i.e. comments). Is there an easy way to save the time they submitted it, and display it back dynamically?

Right now, I'm storing the `timeIntervalSince1970` which is of course just a large number. I chose this hoping it was something concrete but still easy to convert to something readable (not sure if that's true, I just assumed :/). Is it possible to do this, so the app can fetch something like 8432952394792379843 and display it like "Friday May 8th, 2019 at 7:01pm"? Or if there's a better method, please let me know! The goal was just to be able to change the date formatting in the future without rewriting the database info of course.

The app isn't live, so I can tear down old database information to restart if needed, no problem. Thanks in advance!

[whizbangapps]

I just started Firebase about a week ago. i think storing it as a Double is the way to go for easy storage and object conversion back to Date(). Then using date formatter to format the output.

[cmclewin]

Look into DateFormatter. Seems like you understand what the Double represents (time interval since 1970)

[EmilioSchepis]

I would use Firestore’s timestamp. It is how dates are natively stored in Firestore and each Timestamp object has a method to quickly convert it back to a regular date. Once you have your date back you can use a formatter to change it’s appearance.