[OSM-dev] Timestamp in PBF files

[marqqs at gmx.eu]

Hello Scott,

Thanks for your reply! I think what we need is a replacement for the timestamp which has been provided by .osm.bz2 files for years now. For example:


$ wget -q planet.openstreetmap.org/planet/planet-latest.osm.bz2 -O - | bunzip2 | head -4 

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<osm version="0.6" generator="OpenStreetMap planet.c" copyright="OpenStreetMap and contributors" attribution="http://www.openstreetmap.org/copyright/" license="http://opendatacommons.org/licenses/odbl/1.0/" timestamp="2012-11-14T01:10:07Z">
  <bound box="-90,-180,90,180" origin="http://www.openstreetmap.org/api/0.6" />
  <node id="3" lat="50.1240327" lon="14.4524155" timestamp="2012-07-24T12:48:39Z" version="7" changeset="12465837" user="OSMF Redaction Account" uid="722137"/>


As you can see, there is a timestamp="2012-11-14T01:10:07Z which states the replication time - as far as I know.

The PBF formatted planet file form the same day lacks this information. Thus, people who need this timestamp cannot use the PBF planet but are forced to download the old bzipped XML planet file (or to look for a suitable state.txt).

My goal - and presumably Frederik's as well - is to eliminate this disadvantage of PBF formatted files.

I have no objections to code this timestamp as signed Varint with id 32. This should result in two bytes (0x80 0x02) when PBF-coded.

May I add this to the OSM Wiki page?

Markus