Make the warehouse accept records from users whose dates fall on the next day

[kazlauskis]

Allow future dates or time zones.

Several users from New Zealand have reported issues with uploading their samples due to the error message, sample:date_start Please specify a date that is not in the future. I am unsure whether there is a way to account for time zones when specifying dates or if there are different date_type options available.

[johnvanbreda]

2 fixes are possible - I could fudge the validation on future dates so it allows today + 1 day (therefore allowing any timezone to submit a record of today). Or, perhaps better, could the client/app attach a timezone value to the submitted data so that I can adjust the perception of today when the validation check is done?

[DavidRoy]

@johnvanbreda could you do the quick fix now to allow?
@kazlauskis can you update the app submission as suggested?

[kazlauskis]

I agree, let's do the quick fix now and I can then update the date formatting in the app in the following app release.

@johnvanbreda As an alternative, I can format the dates to UTC time, making sure they are always represented as UK dates. This would be correct from the server's perspective, but it could lead to confusion for users viewing the record on a website that displays the incorrect date. So we probably want to include the exact date along with the time zone difference for clarity. Let me know what formatting works best for you. As a suggestion, maybe an ISO 8601 string.

[johnvanbreda]

Since the sample date is a date without time, the ISO 8601 standard doesn't allow for a date + timezone without time (discussion https://stackoverflow.com/questions/52215961/how-can-i-write-an-iso-8601-date-with-a-timezone-but-no-time-component). But we could fudge our own simple variation of an ISO 8601 date as something like 2025-02-10+12. Or alternatively we could accept the timezone as a top-level parameter for the entire submission, e.g. a timezone integer parameter as a sibling of the values of a top level POST to the REST API?

I've done the quick fix.

[kazlauskis]

@johnvanbreda users can upload their data at any time. If I don't send the exact time, how will the warehouse know it's a record for the next day from the timezone alone?