Temporal Extent

Portal Temporal Extents are used to describe the temporal extent of a collection.

See STAC Extent for more details.

TemporalExtent.ts

interface TemporalExtent {
  interval: [string, string | null][];
}

temporal-extent.json

{
  "interval": [["2026-01-01T08:00:00Z", null]]
}

General Properties

interval required

type: [string, string | null][]

Each outer array element can be a separate temporal extent. The first time interval always describes the overall temporal extent of the data. All subsequent time intervals can be used to provide a more precise description of the extent and identify clusters of data. Clients only interested in the overall extent will only need to access the first item in each array. It is recommended to only use multiple temporal extents if a union of them would then include a large uncovered time span (e.g. only having data for the years 2000, 2010 and 2020).

Each inner array consists of exactly two elements, either a timestamp or null.

Timestamps consist of a date and time in UTC and MUST be formatted according to RFC 3339, section 5.6. The temporal reference system is the Gregorian calendar.

Open date ranges are supported by setting the start and/or the end time to null. Example for data from the beginning of 2019 until now: [[“2019-01-01T00:00:00Z”, null]]. It is recommended to provide at least a rough guideline on the temporal extent and thus it’s not recommended to set both start and end time to null. Nevertheless, this is possible if there’s a strong use case for an open date range to both sides.