Stop Guessing Which Temporal Type to Use: A Free Interactive Picker

JavaScript's Temporal API gives you six different types for representing dates and times: Instant, ZonedDateTime, PlainDate, PlainDateTime, PlainTime, and PlainYearMonth. Picking the wrong one is an easy mistake, and it usually shows up later as a timezone bug, a DST edge case, or data that silently loses precision.

The problem

Most guides explain what each Temporal type is, but not which one you should actually use for your specific field. Should a "created at" timestamp be an Instant or a ZonedDateTime? What about a user's birthday? A recurring meeting time?

The fix

I built a small interactive tool called the Temporal Type Picker to answer this in two quick questions:

1. What are you modeling? (a point in time, a calendar date, a wall-clock time, or a duration)
2. Does timezone information matter for your use case?

Based on your answers, it gives you:

• The exact Temporal type to use
• Ready-to-copy constructor code
• The matching PostgreSQL column type for your schema

It's fully client-side, no signup, no data collection, and works entirely in your browser.

🔗 Try it here: Temporal Type Picker

If you're working with dates in modern JavaScript or designing a schema that touches timestamps, this should save you a debugging session or two.