Scripts: Server Time Offset: the three clocks in MQL5 and how timestamps shift on export
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Server Time Offset: the three clocks in MQL5 and how timestamps shift on export:
A datetime in MQL5 is seconds since 1970 - but server time (TimeCurrent, bar times, deal times) is the broker's wall clock stored AS IF it were UTC. Export it to CSV, read it in Python or a spreadsheet with a "seconds since 1970 UTC" parser, and every timestamp shifts by the server's UTC offset. On a UTC-3 broker that is three hours: the daily bar dated 00:00 reads as 21:00 of the previous day, and "yesterday's session" silently becomes "today's, half formed". That happened to a morning report of mine before this script existed. The script prints TimeTradeServer, TimeCurrent, TimeGMT and TimeLocal, the three offsets between them, the tick lag, and this chart's last bar time in server time and in real UTC - then states the rule: export server timestamps as wall-clock text, or export the epoch together with the offset, and never let the consumer apply its own timezone.
Author: Joao Prata Silva Yglesias