title: Recommended date format for REST GET API
body: <p>What's the recommended timestamp format for a REST GET API like this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>http://api.example.com/start_date/{timestamp}
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I think the actual date format should be ISO 8601 format, such as <code>YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssZ</code> for UTC time.</p>
  
  <p>Should we use the ISO 8601 version without hyphens and colons, such as:</p>
  
  <pre><code>http://api.example.com/start_date/YYYYMMDDThhmmssZ
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>or should we encode the ISO 8601 format, using for example base64 encoding?</p>