Displaying Unix Timestamps in Manager Fields

If a project stores dates as Unix timestamps, the manager experience can become awkward very quickly. You either enter raw integers by hand or keep converting values before every edit. The donor solution behind this article was a custom TV built specifically to solve that problem.

The package used the Air Datepicker UI and stored the result as a timestamp while still letting the editor work with a readable date field.

Why this pattern is useful

• APIs and integrations often expect Unix timestamps
• sorting and comparisons stay predictable in PHP and SQL
• editors still get a readable calendar widget in the manager

Practical note from the original release

The original author pointed to the airpicker CustomTV and added one small but important note: if you want the field to store both date and time, add time to the TV possible values configuration.

When to prefer a custom TV

Use a timestamp-aware TV when the field is part of your content model and editors need to manage it regularly. If the date is only used internally by package logic, it is often cleaner to keep the conversion inside code and leave the manager UI out of it.