The Date field
There is no special “date” field type in DataPicta—fields are either text or numbers. Dates are simply text values that follow a date-friendly format, so they can be understood and used in charts.
DataPicta accepts date and time values in common, standards-based formats. If a value cannot be read as a valid date, we’ll skip it. To keep things smooth, stick to the well-defined ISO 8601 forms below. If you want a quick primer, see the ISO 8601 overview on Wikipedia.
Where DataPicta uses date/time
In the horizontal and vertical axis, you can set the type to time to get a date-based axis.
Recommended formats (ISO 8601)
- Date only:
2024-12-31(order isYYYY-MM-DD; do not swap day and month) - Date + time in UTC:
2024-12-31T14:30:00Z - Date + time with offset:
2024-12-31T15:30:00+01:00 - Date + time with milliseconds:
2024-12-31T14:30:00.123Z
These formats are unambiguous, time-zone aware (when you include Z or an offset), and the most reliable.
Other formats (use sparingly)
These can be read, though ISO 8601 is still the safest choice:
- Long month name:
December 31, 2024 - Short month name:
Dec 31, 2024 - Date + time with a zone name:
December 31, 2024 2:30 PM UTC
Formats to avoid
Please skip these; they’re ambiguous and often fail:
31-12-2024or12-31-2024(day and month swapped)12/31/2024or31/12/2024(slashes and ambiguous order)2024/12/31(slashes instead of dashes)- Two-digit years like
31-12-24
Copy-paste examples
2024-06-15
2024-06-15T09:45:00Z
2024-06-15T11:45:00+02:00
2024-06-15T09:45:00.250Z
December 15, 2024
Dec 15, 2024 9:45 AM UTC