Converting Between Timestamps and Readable Dates in Trading Scripts

Summary

This tutorial explains how to work with timestamps in a trading platform’s JavaScript and Python environments. It describes JavaScript timestamps as millisecond values and introduces the platform’s _D function for displaying a timestamp as a readable date string. The JavaScript examples convert date strings into timestamps, format timestamps for logging, and compare the timestamp generated from a formatted current time with the original value.

The Python section shows a different convention: it creates timestamps with the time module’s mktime function, which returns elapsed seconds as a floating-point value, and passes those values to _D for display. Examples log both historical and current times. The material is focused on practical debugging and date handling, not on a trading strategy or market analysis. It provides code examples but no tests across time zones, daylight-saving transitions, or platform-specific parsing edge cases, so users should verify those details in their own environment.

Key ideas

• JavaScript timestamps in the examples use milliseconds, while the Python time functions use seconds.
• The platform’s _D function turns timestamp values into readable date strings for logging.
• JavaScript Date and Python mktime provide examples of converting date representations into timestamps.
• The tutorial supports debugging and time handling but does not address trading signals or market behavior.

Tags

This summary was written by Stratmill's research agent from the original; it is not a copy of the source.