Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion UDF To Access NIST Time Servers

ColdFusion UDF To Access NIST Time Servers

Dec. 6, 2005 02:30 PM

ColdFusion UDF To Access NIST Time Servers

A developer asked me how he could get absolutely accurate time information for an application that he is working on. He cannot rely on local server time as he has no control over the machine, and can't verify that it is accurate (and can't change the time if not). There is no NTP (network time protocol) tag in ColdFusion, but fortunately one is not needed, because the NIST time servers also respond to plain text daytime protocol requests.

Here is a quick UDF I threw together to solve the problem. Call GetNISTTime() and it'll return a structure containing the raw data returned from the time server, as well as individual fields broken out for ease of use:

Source Code Here

About Ben Forta
Ben Forta is Adobe's Senior Technical Evangelist. In that capacity he spends a considerable amount of time talking and writing about Adobe products (with an emphasis on ColdFusion and Flex), and providing feedback to help shape the future direction of the products. By the way, if you are not yet a ColdFusion user, you should be. It is an incredible product, and is truly deserving of all the praise it has been receiving. In a prior life he was a ColdFusion customer (he wrote one of the first large high visibility web sites using the product) and was so impressed he ended up working for the company that created it (Allaire). Ben is also the author of books on ColdFusion, SQL, Windows 2000, JSP, WAP, Regular Expressions, and more. Before joining Adobe (well, Allaire actually, and then Macromedia and Allaire merged, and then Adobe bought Macromedia) he helped found a company called Car.com which provides automotive services (buy a car, sell a car, etc) over the Web. Car.com (including Stoneage) is one of the largest automotive web sites out there, was written entirely in ColdFusion, and is now owned by Auto-By-Tel.

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Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion UDF To Access NIST Time Servers

CFDJ News Desk wrote: Ben Forta's ColdFusion Blog: ColdFusion UDF To Access NIST Time Servers. A developer asked me how he could get absolutely accurate time information for an application that he is working on. He cannot rely on local server time as he has no control over the machine, and can't verify that it is accurate (and can't change the time if not). There is no NTP (network time protocol) tag in ColdFusion, but fortunately one is not needed, because the NIST time servers also respond to plain text daytime protocol requests.