time
elementdatetime
interface HTMLTimeElement : HTMLElement { attribute DOMString datetime; };
The time
element represents its
contents, along with a machine-readable form of those contents in
the datetime
attribute. The
kind of content is limited to various kinds of dates, times,
time-zone offsets, and durations, as described below.
The datetime
attribute may be present. If present, its value must be a
representation of the element's contents in a machine-readable
format.
A time
element that does not have a datetime
content attribute must
not have any element descendants.
The datetime value of a time
element is
the value of the element's datetime
content attribute, if
it has one, or the element's textContent
, if it does
not.
The datetime value of a time
element
must match one of the following syntaxes.
<time>2011-11</time>
<time>2011-11-12</time>
<time>11-12</time>
<time>14:54</time>
<time>14:54:39</time>
<time>14:54:39.92922</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54:39</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54:39.92922</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54:39</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54:39.92922</time>
<time>Z</time>
<time>+0000</time>
<time>+00:00</time>
<time>-0800</time>
<time>-08:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54Z</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54:39Z</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54:39.92922Z</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54+0000</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54:39+0000</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54:39.92922+0000</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54+00:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54:39+00:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12T14:54:39.92922+00:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12T06:54-0800</time>
<time>2011-11-12T06:54:39-0800</time>
<time>2011-11-12T06:54:39.92922-0800</time>
<time>2011-11-12T06:54-08:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12T06:54:39-08:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12T06:54:39.92922-08:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54Z</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54:39Z</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54:39.92922Z</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54+0000</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54:39+0000</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54:39.92922+0000</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54+00:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54:39+00:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12 14:54:39.92922+00:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12 06:54-0800</time>
<time>2011-11-12 06:54:39-0800</time>
<time>2011-11-12 06:54:39.92922-0800</time>
<time>2011-11-12 06:54-08:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12 06:54:39-08:00</time>
<time>2011-11-12 06:54:39.92922-08:00</time>
<time>2011-W46</time>
<time>2011</time>
<time>PT4H18M3S</time>
<time>4h 18m 3s</time>
The datetime
IDL attribute must reflect the content attribute of the
same name.
The time
element can be used to encode dates, for
example in microformats. The following shows a hypothetical way of
encoding an event using a variant on hCalendar that uses the
time
element:
<div class="vevent"> <a class="url" href="http://www.web2con.com/">http://www.web2con.com/</a> <span class="summary">Web 2.0 Conference</span>: <time class="dtstart" datetime="2005-10-05">October 5</time> - <time class="dtend" datetime="2005-10-07">7</time>, at the <span class="location">Argent Hotel, San Francisco, CA</span> </div>
Here, a fictional microdata vocabulary based on the Atom
vocabulary is used with the time
element to mark up a
blog post's publication date.
<article itemscope itemtype="http://n.example.org/rfc4287"> <h1 itemprop="title">Big tasks</h1> <footer>Published <time itemprop="published" datetime="2009-08-29">two days ago</time>.</footer> <p itemprop="content">Today, I went out and bought a bike for my kid.</p> </article>
In the following snippet, the time
element is used
to encode a date in the ISO8601 format, for later processing by a
script:
<p>Our first date was <time datetime="2006-09-23">a Saturday</time>.</p>
In this second snippet, the value includes a time:
<p>We stopped talking at <time datetime="2006-09-24T05:00-07:00">5am the next morning</time>.</p>
A script loaded by the page (and thus privy to the page's
internal convention of marking up dates and times using the
time
element) could scan through the page and look at
all the time
elements therein to create an index of
dates and times.
For example, this element conveys the string "Tuesday" with the additional semantic that the 12th of November 2011 is the meaning that corresponds to "Tuesday":
Today is <time datetime="2011-11-12">Tuesday</time>.
In this example, a specific time in the Pacific Standard Time timezone is specified:
Your next meeting is at <time datetime="2011-11-12T15:00-08:00">3pm</time>.