Re: Date formats for structured output

[David Fifield <david () bamsoftware com>]

On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 05:08:22AM -0700, David Fifield wrote:
> On Thu, Aug 16, 2012 at 05:05:18AM -0700, David Fifield wrote:
> > On Wed, Aug 15, 2012 at 08:00:00PM -0700, commit-mailer () insecure org wrote:
> > > Author: dmiller
> > > Date: Wed Aug 15 20:00:00 2012
> > > New Revision: 29601
> > >
> > > Log:
> > > Add @xmloutput nsedoc to ssh-hostkey, smb-os-discovery
> > >
> > > Modified: nmap/scripts/smb-os-discovery.nse
> > > ==============================================================================
> > > --- nmap/scripts/smb-os-discovery.nse     (original)
> > > +++ nmap/scripts/smb-os-discovery.nse     Wed Aug 15 20:00:00 2012
> > > @@ -56,7 +56,18 @@
> > >  -- |   NetBIOS computer name: SQL2008
> > >  -- |   NetBIOS domain name: LAB
> > >  -- |_  System time: 2011-04-20 13:34:06 UTC-5
> > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> > > +--
> > > +--@xmloutput
> > > +-- <script id="smb-os-discovery" output="...">
> > > +--   <elem key="OS">Windows Server (R) 2008 Standard 6001 Service Pack 1 (Windows Server (R) 2008 Standard 
> > > 6.0)</elem>
> > > +--   <elem key="Computer name">Sql2008</elem>
> > > +--   <elem key="Domain name">lab.test.local</elem>
> > > +--   <elem key="Forest name">test.local</elem>
> > > +--   <elem key="FQDN">Sql2008.lab.test.local</elem>
> > > +--   <elem key="NetBIOS computer name">SQL2008</elem>
> > > +--   <elem key="NetBIOS domain name">LAB</elem>
> > > +--   <elem key="System time">2011-04-20 13:34:06 UTC-5</elem>
> > > +-- </script>
> >
> > As for this part of the output,
> > > +--   <elem key="System time">2011-04-20 13:34:06 UTC-5</elem>
> > I think there will be a lot of value if we use a common date format in
> > all scripts that use structured output. I have been using
> > os.date("%Y-%m-%dT%H:%M:%SZ") which looks like
> >     2012-08-16T05:03:30Z
> > This is ISO 8601. However, this supposes UTC, so we would have to
> > represent the "UTC-5" in the date above separately. Perhaps we should
> > settle on a date format that also includes a time zone?
>
> Here is something:
> https://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/iso-time.html#zone

I have just (r29731) made a new stdnse.format_timestamp function, which
formats dates and times according to RFC 3339, and can optionally
include a time zone. I modified existing scripts to use it.

stdnse.format_timestamp(os.time())           --> "2012-09-08T16:17:55"
stdnse.format_timestamp(os.time(), 0)        --> "2012-09-08T16:17:55+00:00"
stdnse.format_timestamp(os.time(), -7*60*60) --> "2012-09-08T09:17:55-07:00"

I started a new section on structured output conventions in
scripting.xml to document this convention and others that will arise in
the future.

David Fifield
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