Placeholder {time.now.http} prints local time as GMT time

[steffenbusch]

The problem I'm having:

I want to setup a very simple Caddy health-check endpoint and want to utilize placeholders from https://caddyserver.com/docs/conventions#placeholders to display the date + time the health check was successfully executed.

The placeholder {time.now.http} is described as

The current time in the format used in HTTP headers

The server, where Caddy is running, is using GMT+2 (/etc/localtime -> /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Berlin).
While the placeholders {time.now} and {time.now.common_log} are perfect and return a date/time with the correct timezone, the returned value of {time.now.http} says the time is GMT:

$ date
Mon Aug 21 18:16:13 CEST 2023
$ curl --dump-header - https://playground.stbu.net/compare-time
HTTP/2 200
alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=2592000
content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
server: Caddy
content-length: 333
date: Mon, 21 Aug 2023 16:16:13 GMT

1) time.now            = 2023-08-21 18:16:13.949657242 +0200 CEST m=+1187.670368014
2) time.now.http       = Mon, 21 Aug 2023 18:16:13 GMT
3) time.now.common_log = 21/Aug/2023:18:16:13 +0200
--
1) The current time as a Go Time struct
2) The current time in the format used in HTTP headers
3) The current time in Common Log Format

The output for 2) time.now.http should have been Mon, 21 Aug 2023 16:16:13 GMT (= the same value as the date response header shown by curl), not Mon, 21 Aug 2023 18:16:13 GMT (Hour = 18 instead of 16).

My Caddyfile to reproduce this issue (as long as your server is not in UTC) is:

{
        http_port 80
        https_port 443
        skip_install_trust true

        servers :443 {
        }
        default_sni playground.stbu.net

        log debug_log {
                output file log/debug.log {
                        roll_size 10m
                        roll_keep_for 7d
                }
                format console {
                        time_format iso8601
                }
                level debug
                exclude http.log.access.log0
        }

}

https://playground.stbu.net {

        handle /caddy-health-status {
                header Content-Type application/json
                respond `{"status": "ok", "as-of": "{time.now.http}", "powered-by":"{$HOSTNAME}"}`
        }

        handle /compare-time {
                respond <<TXT
1) time.now            = {time.now}
2) time.now.http       = {time.now.http}
3) time.now.common_log = {time.now.common_log}
--
1) The current time as a Go Time struct
2) The current time in the format used in HTTP headers
3) The current time in Common Log Format

TXT
        }

        handle * {
                respond "It works"
        }

}

Caddy version: v2.7.4 h1:J8nisjdOxnYHXlorUKXY75Gr6iBfudfoGhrJ8t7/flI=
Non-standard-modules:

http.authentication.providers.authorizer
http.handlers.authenticator
http.handlers.cgi
security

[WeidiDeng]

Fixed in 5774. You can try it using xcaddy build fix-placeholder-time.now.http.

[steffenbusch]

Thank you very much @WeidiDeng.

That works now as expected:

$ date
Tue Aug 22 08:35:51 CEST 2023
$ curl --dump-header - https://playground.stbu.net/compare-time
HTTP/2 200
alt-svc: h3=":443"; ma=2592000
content-type: text/plain; charset=utf-8
server: Caddy
content-length: 331
date: Tue, 22 Aug 2023 06:35:53 GMT

1) time.now            = 2023-08-22 08:35:53.503900206 +0200 CEST m=+83.178883888
2) time.now.http       = Tue, 22 Aug 2023 06:35:53 GMT
3) time.now.common_log = 22/Aug/2023:08:35:53 +0200
--
1) The current time as a Go Time struct
2) The current time in the format used in HTTP headers
3) The current time in Common Log Format