Zeroclickinfo-goodies: UnixTime: Time does not update

[rushsteve1]

The time does not update on the page, and requires a refresh to do so.
This can lead to the page displaying a completely inaccurate time.

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IA Page: http://duck.co/ia/view/unix_time
Maintainer: @codejoust

[zekiel]

@rushsteve1 it sounds like the unixtime answer should be rendered as a live counter, if I'm reading your issue/suggestion correctly.

If someone were to tackle this, you might be able to leverage some of the timer IAs front-end: https://duck.co/ia/view/timer

Looking forward to codejoust's thoughts as well.

[rushsteve1]

Yes that is what I meant. It seems a bit pointless that a clock does not update without reloading.

[mintsoft]

@rushsteve1 Something you may have missed here, is that the IA can take in a unix time: https://duckduckgo.com/?q=1469160580+unixtime&t=ffab&ia=answer it's not just for seeing the current time in seconds since the epoch

[rushsteve1]

Regardless of its extra features such as this, all I'm saying is that a clock that you have to reload the page to have update is problematic, as it only shows the correct time at the instant the page loads. By the time someone gets the chance to actually look at it, the actual time is different from the one displayed.

[GuiltyDolphin]

@rushsteve1 I don't think this leads to it displaying an incorrect time - it shows the exact times it is considering in the list fields.

Could you give an example of when it actually displays an _incorrect_ result?

[rushsteve1]

@GuiltyDolphin Many of us, myself included, leave a browser window open while we are programming for various reasons.
If you knew that you were going to need to know the UNIX time, to say compare with a running timestamp to determine if it was synced correctly, then if you open IA first then it would always be behind the running timestamp, even if you reloaded the page.
This could lead some to believe that their time was incorrect, though most would just go look for another UNIX time utility.

The real issue isn't that the IA shows only the moment the page loaded by default, its that it is incapable of showing a running time at all.

[zekiel]

There's a bunch of good feedback in here that would probably be useful in a variety of current/future Instant Answer scenarios.

This particular issue seems correctly stated and labeled as an "Improvement" but I've also added "Suggestion" because there's no real issue or bug with the IA. It's assumed that most people read the output as the time of their query execution, not the moment in time they look at it. Similar to weather, it doesn't update in real-time but _could_.

[rushsteve1]

A proposed solution:
Add a toggle button that gets the new current time and causes the clocks (UNIX, UTC, and Local) to start updating in real time while the button is pressed and stopping again when depressed.
At the moment I don't know enough about IA to do this myself, but maybe I'll do some reading and submit a PR.
If anyone else more more familiar would like to take this on, feel free.

[droidchef]

@rushsteve1 If you have not started working on this, I'd like to take this up.
@zekiel Thoughts ?
Thanks

[rushsteve1]

@ishan1604 Nope I haven't started (got dragged away for various reasons)
It's all yours, have fun.

[zekiel]

@ishan1604 I've invited you to the Contributors' Team: https://github.com/orgs/duckduckgo/teams/duckduckhack-contributors If you accept the invite, I can assign you to this issue.

[droidchef]

@zekiel Thanks for the invite, you can now assign me the issue ☺️

[pjhampton]

Hey all

DuckDuckHack is now in Maintenance Mode and from now on, we are only accepting issues and PRs for essential bugs and bug fixes.

Unfortunately, with the above in mind, this isn't something we can action and will be closed.

We appreciate you taking the time to contribute and apologize for not being able to triage this issue.