Shopify Time Handling

The Shopify Connector and all its add-on applications and services handle data in different contexts and the different services may be physically located in different time zones if the servers they run on are in different countries or continents. To make sure that all data is handled correctly all dates and times are handled using Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) time.

What Is UTC Time

UTC time is the primary time standard by which the world regulates clocks and time. It is within about 1 second of mean solar time at 0° longitude and is not adjusted for daylight saving time. It is effectively a successor to Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).

The UTC time is always based on the same location and then the local time will have an offset from this time based on in which zone the user is located.

The time expressed in UTC does not differ much from the local time format. One can recognize the UTC time when the time ends with the letter ‘Z’, e.g. ‘2020-05-15T15:25:00Z’.

UTC Time Use

The Perfion application can be installed in multiple computers where each can be located in different part of the world and each machine would show the different local time. This means that if Shopify Connector have updated a product at some specific time, then a user located in Europe would understand that time differently than a user located in USA while both may understand the time incorrectly if the Shopify Connector was installed in some server located in Asia. Because of this issue the Shopify Connector will report all times in UTC time which is the same regardless where user is located or where the Shopify Connector is installed.

The use of UTC or local time based on Shopify Connector component.