Timeshape is a Java library that can be used to determine to which time zone a given geo coordinate belongs. It's based on data published at https://github.com/evansiroky/timezone-boundary-builder/releases, which itself is inherited from the OpenStreetMap data.
But what if knowing just time zone for a geo coordinate is not enough? Wouldn't it be nice to know more, like administrative area or city neighborhood? Check out GeoBundle, now there's a Java library for that, too!
“Time is an illusion.”
― Albert Einstein
Timeshape is published on Maven Central. The coordinates are the following:
<dependency>
<groupId>net.iakovlev</groupId>
<artifactId>timeshape</artifactId>
<version>2023b.21</version>
</dependency>Starting from release 2023b.20, Timeshape re-introduces support for Java 8. It was inadevrtently dropped in one of the previous releases, but now it's brought back.
Android developers should add Timeshape to the app level gradle.build as follows:
implementation('net.iakovlev:timeshape:2023b.21') {
// Exclude standard compression library
exclude group: 'com.github.luben', module: 'zstd-jni'
}
// Import aar for native component compilation
implementation 'com.github.luben:zstd-jni:1.5.5-11@aar'Are you using Timeshape? Please consider opening a pull request to list your organization here:
- Name and website of your organization
- Hopper
The user API of library is in net.iakovlev.timeshape.TimeZoneEngine class. To use it, follow these steps:
Initialize the class with the data for the whole world:
import net.iakovlev.timeshape.TimeZoneEngine;
TimeZoneEngine engine = TimeZoneEngine.initialize();Or, alternatively, initialize it with some bounding box only, to reduce memory usage:
TimeZoneEngine engine = TimeZoneEngine.initialize(47.0599, 4.8237, 55.3300, 15.2486);It is important to mention that for the time zone to be loaded by the second method, it must be covered by the bounding box completely, not just intersect with it.
During initialization, the data is read from resource and the index is built. Initialization takes a significant amount of time (approximately 1 second), so do it only once in program lifetime.
Data can also be read from an external file, see overloads of TimeZoneEngine.initialize that accept
TarArchiveInputStream. The file format should be same as produced by running builder sbt project
(see here).
It is responsibility of caller to close input stream passed to TimeZoneEngine.initialize.
Once initialization is completed, you can query the ZoneId based on latitude and longitude:
import java.util.Optional;
import java.time.ZoneId;
Optional<ZoneId> maybeZoneId = engine.query(52.52, 13.40);Starting from release 2019b.7, the data source from which Timeshape is built contains overlapping geometries. In other words, some geo points can simultaneously belong to multiple time zones. To accommodate this, Timeshape has made the following change. It's now possible to query all the time zones, to which given geo point belongs:
List<ZoneId> allZones = engine.queryAll(52.52, 13.40);The Optional<ZoneId> query(double latitude, double longitude) method is still there, and it still returns
maximum one ZoneId. If given geo point belongs to multiple time zones, only single one will be returned.
Which of multiple zones will be returned is entirely arbitrary. Because of this, method
Optional<ZoneId> query(double latitude, double longitude) is not suitable for use cases where such choice must
be deliberate. In such cases use List<ZoneId> queryAll(double latitude, double longitude) method and apply further
business logic to its output to choose the right time zone. Consult file
https://raw.githubusercontent.com/evansiroky/timezone-boundary-builder/master/expectedZoneOverlaps.json
for information about areas of the world where multiple time zones are to be expected.
Timeshape supports querying of multiple sequential geo points (a polyline, e.g. a GPS trace) in an optimized way using method
List<SameZoneSpan> queryPolyline(double[] points). Performance tests (see net.iakovlev.timeshape.PolylineQueryBenchmark)
show significant speedup of using this method for querying a polyline, comparing to separately querying each point from polyline
using Optional<ZoneId> query(double latitude, double longitude) method:
Benchmark Mode Cnt Score Error Units
PolylineQueryBenchmark.testQueryPoints thrpt 5 2,188 ▒ 0,044 ops/s
PolylineQueryBenchmark.testQueryPolyline thrpt 5 4,073 ▒ 0,017 ops/s
See dedicated document for description of Timeshape internals.
Version of Timeshape consist of data version and software version, divided by a '.' symbol. Data version is as specified at https://github.com/evansiroky/timezone-boundary-builder/releases. Software version is an integer, starting from 1 and incrementing for each published artifact.
The code of the library is licensed under the MIT License.
The time zone data contained in library is licensed under the Open Data Commons Open Database License (ODbL).
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