Configuration and time

This page covers the values your app reads from its environment, such as a database address or an API key, and everything to do with time: the current time, dates and time zones, and showing dates, times and other text to people in their own language.

Two rules run through the page:

• Your code never reads the environment or the system clock itself. Settings arrive as typed config.<field> values, checked before the app starts. The time arrives as clock.now, which stays the same for the whole operation.
• Values for machines and text for people never mix. An Instant is stored and compared. A formatted date is only shown.