## Problem / Use case

You have ISO 8601 formatted timestamps (or similar) as strings (e.g., from log fields or external inputs), and you want to convert them into a readable datetime format for dashboards or further processing. Use [parseTimestamp](https://coralogix.com/docs/dataprime/language-reference/functions-reference/time/parsetimestamp/index.md) and [formatTimestamp](https://coralogix.com/docs/dataprime/language-reference/functions-reference/time/formattimestamp/index.md) to make the conversion possible.

## Query

```dataprime
create parsed from parseTimestamp('2025-04-29T05:53:02.439Z', 'iso8601')
| create formatted_time from formatTimestamp(parsed, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S')
```

## Output

```json
{
  "parsed": 2025-04-29T05:53:02.439Z,
  "formatted_time": "2025-04-29 05:53:02"
}
```

## Variations

- Format as date only: `'%Y-%m-%d'`
- Include timezone offset: `formatTimestamp(parsed, '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S', 'UTC')`
- Format as timestamp in milliseconds: `'timestamp_milli'`

## TL;DR

Use `parseTimestamp` to interpret strings as timestamps, then `formatTimestamp` to convert them into readable strings. Works great for standardizing date fields across logs.