Harvest Error -- Date Format Errors
Overview
How to identify and fix malformed date values in the modified and issued fields, the most common cause of harvest validation errors.
Source
Details
Harvester Guide Pages
| Error Type | Page |
|---|---|
| Getting Started | What is Harvesting? | Understanding Harvest Errors |
| Quick Lookup | FAQ Overview | Quick Reference |
| Date & Time | Date Format Errors (modified, issued) |
| Update Frequency | accrualPeriodicity Errors |
| License | License Field Errors |
| Contact Info | Email Format Errors (contactPoint.hasEmail) |
| Keywords/Tags | Missing Keywords | Keyword Format |
| Missing Fields | Missing Required Fields (modified, keyword, description) |
| File Structure | Transformation Errors (ISO 19115, XML, file problems) |
| Other Issues | Duplicates, Sync Failures, Unrecognized Records |
Date format errors – modified and issued
Date format errors in the modified and issued fields are the single most common cause of harvest validation failures, making up about 40% of all errors.
What you see
$.modified, '201603-01-01T00:00:00.000+00:00' does not match any of the acceptable formats
or
$.issued, '201505-01-01T00:00:00.000+00:00' does not match any of the acceptable formats
What this means
The date value has a typo. The year and month are run together without the required hyphen separator, producing an invalid date string that the schema cannot accept. For example, 201603-01-01 is invalid because the year 2016 and month 03 are merged into 201603. The correct value is 2016-03-01.
This error is usually not introduced by hand. It is typically produced by a metadata pipeline or export tool that has a bug in how it formats dates.
Most common offending values
201603-01-01T00:00:00.000+00:00– should be2016-03-01T00:00:00.000+00:00201505-01-01T00:00:00.000+00:00– should be2015-05-01T00:00:00.000+00:00201404-01-01T00:00:00.000+00:00– should be2014-04-01T00:00:00.000+00:00
These values are concentrated in KML and Census boundary file sources from 2014 to 2016.
What the correct format looks like
Dates must follow ISO 8601 format. The separator between year, month, and day must always be a hyphen.
- Date only:
2016-03-01 - Date and time:
2016-03-01T00:00:00.000+00:00 - Date and time in UTC:
2016-03-01T00:00:00Z
Any of these are valid. The key requirement is that the year, month, and day are each separated by a hyphen.
If you can edit your metadata directly
Find the modified and issued fields in your metadata records and correct the date format. Check that the year, month, and day each have a hyphen between them. If many records are affected, the fix is best applied in the system that generates your metadata rather than record by record.
If you cannot edit the metadata yourself
Contact whoever manages your agency’s metadata publishing system or data catalog and tell them:
“The
modifiedandissueddate fields on some of our datasets are formatted incorrectly. The year and month are being merged without a hyphen separator. For example,201603-01-01should be2016-03-01. This is causing validation failures on harvest.data.gov.”