Salesforce Apex: ISO Timestamp Format Function

Question

I was wondering if there is an apex date or datetime function to format a date/time to the ISO formatted timestamp "2007-04-05T12:30-02:00" or would this have to be created by another means?

Thanks.

Answer 1

In Apex you can use the DateTime format(string dataFormat) or format(string dataFormat, string timezone) methods. It accepts a dataFormat string, which corresponds to a Java simple date format. You will need to define the correct format for ISO 8601.

Also, take into account the timezone of the DateTime. In the example below I've used formatGMT to avoid the timezone offset.

System.debug(datetime.now().formatGMT('yyyy-MM-dd\'T\'HH:mm:ss.SSS\'Z\''));

Alternatively, you could use the JSON serializer.

System.debug(json.serialize(datetime.now()));

Answer 2

For anyone reading this now, if you want the time zone, using Java SimpleDateFormat, you can get the +/-hh:mm timezone offset value:

System.debug(datetime.now().format('yyyy-MM-dd\'T\'HH:mm:ss.SSSXXX', 'America/Los_Angeles'));

Output: 2021-01-15T17:30:22.735-08:00