Unix time stamp or string with time zone?

Question

I my web REST API service I've decided to return a dateTime data as a string with a timezone which looks like this: "someDate":"2012-01-23T22:52:37.039+02:00" I wonder, how idiomatic is it? If I returned it as Unix time stamp, would it be more sensible?

Answer 1

Personally, I prefer using unix timestamps in situations like this because it is completely timezone agnostic and leaves the timezone interpretation entirely up to the client. Additionally, depending on your client, it's generally less code to parse a unix timestamp into a date than a date string, but that's likely only an ancillary consideration.