Dates and time zonesdev

Luxir accepts ISO-8601 dates, epoch milliseconds, and both Solr and Elasticsearch/OpenSearch date-math syntax. Date fields support queries, ranges, sorting, and facets. Use the built-in _dt template (_dts for multiple dates), or define a date field explicitly. Partial dates match the whole day or month they name. Set time_zone on a request for local date queries and calendar buckets. Dates are stored as int64 milliseconds since the Unix epoch. This page covers the accepted forms, date math, and time zones; the query language has the grammar corners and faceting has calendar buckets.

Accepted date values

At ingest and in queries, a DATE value is either a number (epoch milliseconds, not a year) or an ISO-8601 string:

2024-06-25T10:30:00Z        a full instant, UTC
2024-06-25T10:30:00-05:00   a full instant with an offset
2024-06-25T10:30            no zone: UTC by default
2024-06-25                  a whole day
2024-06                     a whole month
1719311400000               epoch milliseconds

A partial date names its whole window at its own granularity. Querying when_dt:2024-06 matches every instant in June; the range [2024-01 TO 2024-06] covers January through June, endpoints included.

Date math

Anywhere a date is accepted in a query, date math is too. Both Solr and Elasticsearch/OpenSearch syntaxes work without configuration. An expression is an anchor (NOW / now, or any literal above) followed by add, subtract, and round commands, evaluated left to right:

Solr	Elasticsearch/OpenSearch	Meaning in Luxir
NOW-30DAYS	now-30d	Thirty days ago.
NOW/DAY	now/d	Today, as a whole-day window.
NOW-1MONTH/MONTH	now-1M/M	All of last month.
2024-06-25T00:00:00Z+6MONTHS	2024-06-25T00:00:00Z||+6M	Six months after the given date.

Solr syntax appends word units directly to the anchor (DAYS, MONTHS, case-insensitive; WEEKS is a Luxir extension). Elasticsearch/OpenSearch syntax uses one-letter units (d, M, case-sensitive: M is month, m is minute), with || separating a literal date from its math. Math after now needs no separator. NOW and now use one clock snapshot for the whole request, so every clause in a request sees the same instant.

Rounding produces a window, and a range endpoint uses the appropriate edge of it: when_dt:>=NOW/DAY means “from the start of today” and when_dt:<=NOW/DAY means “through the end of today”.

Time zones

By default everything above is UTC. Set time_zone on a search request to use another time zone for dates and date math:

POST /collections/main/_search

Copy as curl

{"time_zone": "America/Denver",
 "query": {"range": {"field": "when_dt", "gte": "NOW/DAY"}}}

(time_zone is a request-level setting: it sits beside the query, not inside it, and applies to every date in the request.)

The zone can be an IANA name (case-sensitive) or a fixed offset such as +05:30. It changes three things:

• Offset-less literals become local civil times: 2024-06-25 is the Denver day, not the UTC day.
• Rounding is local: NOW/DAY starts at Denver midnight.
• DAY and larger units add calendar time: across a daylight-saving change, +1DAY lands at the same local clock time even when that is 23 or 25 physical hours away. Hours and smaller stay fixed physical durations.

NOW, epoch milliseconds, and literals with Z or an explicit offset are instants; the zone does not move them, only math applied to them.

Around a daylight-saving change, local times that do not exist are shifted forward by the gap, and repeated local times take the earlier occurrence. In the rare case where a zone change skips an entire calendar date, the request still succeeds and returns a date_granule_skipped warning naming the date.

Ingest is always UTC. A document ingested with "when_dt": "2024-06-25" is anchored at UTC midnight even if later queries use a zone. When the same text must mean the same instant on both paths, write it with Z or an explicit offset.

Date histograms

Range facets bucket DATE fields with either a fixed gap in milliseconds or a calendar gap in the facet’s zone:

POST /collections/main/_search

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{
  "time_zone": "America/Denver",
  "query": {
    "range": {
      "field": "when_dt",
      "gte": "NOW/DAY-7DAYS"
    }
  },
  "ops": {
    "per_day": {
      "range_facet": {
        "field": "when_dt",
        "start": "NOW/DAY-7DAYS",
        "end": "NOW/DAY+1DAY",
        "calendar_gap": {
          "n": 1,
          "unit": "day"
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Buckets are returned in order, zero counts included, with [start, end) epoch-millisecond pairs as bucket ids. Calendar buckets follow the civil calendar: months vary in length, and a daylight-saving day is 23 or 25 hours wide. A facet may set its own time_zone; leaving it empty inherits the request’s. See faceting.md for the full contract.