---
title: TIME
summary: null
url: https://www.fastly.com/documentation/reference/vcl/types/time
---

An absolute time.
No literal syntax is provided for the TIME type;
instead, see the `std.time()` function for creating a TIME value:

```vcl
declare local var.t TIME;
set var.time = std.time("Fri, 21 Aug 1981 14:51:07 GMT", now);
```

Conversions to STRING values are rendered in [RFC 1123 format](https://www.ietf.org/rfc/rfc1123.txt),
with the timezone in GMT:

```vcl
declare local var.t TIME;
set var.t = std.time("Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT", now);
set resp.http.X-t = var.t; /* "Thu, 01 Jan 1970 00:00:00 GMT" */
```

Similar to RTIME values, a TIME value is a 64-bit signed integer,
measured in nanoseconds since epoch.