Local time loses 52 seconds after marshal/unmarshal - go

Question

I parse a time in Local, marshal it to JSON, un-marshal it and the times no longer match.
timeA, _ := time.ParseInLocation("15:04", "8:00", time.Local)
jBytes, _ := json.Marshal(timeA)
var timeB time.Time
json.Unmarshal(jBytes, &timeB)
fmt.Printf("Time A: %+v, Time B: %+v\n", timeA, timeB)
fmt.Printf("Time A: %+v, Time B: %+v\n", timeA.Local(), timeB.Local())
fmt.Printf("Diff: %s\n", timeA.Sub(timeB))
fmt.Printf("Marshaled: %s", string(jBytes))
Time A: 0000-01-01 08:00:00 -0733 LMT, Time B: 0000-01-01 08:00:00 -0733 -0733
Time A: 0000-01-01 08:00:00 -0733 LMT, Time B: 0000-01-01 07:59:08 -0733 LMT
Diff: 52s
Marshaled: "0000-01-01T08:00:00-07:33"
This is running on linux with Edmonton/Mountain as my local time so I guess it's not recognizing the location and showing offset twice -733 -733. When I call local, the parsed one consistently loses 52 seconds for some reason.
I'd expect the times to match. Is my clock 52 seconds off a remote one it's referencing or something?

Answer 1

Prior to September 1, 1906, your time zone difference was UTC-7:33:52. json.Unmarshal is just using the 7:33 in the marshaled text for the offset, instead of the correct value of 7:33:52, so the time.Time value it calculates is off by 52 seconds. But your time.Local implementation seems to be getting it right (to the extent we can describe backdating time zone differences to year 1 as "right") and subtracting the full 7:33:52 from the time.Time value, resulting in the difference you're seeing.
If you output:
fmt.Printf("Time A: %+v, Time B: %+v\n", timeA.UTC(), timeB.UTC())
with your current code you should see that the UTC time for timeB is getting set to 15:33:00 after unmarshaling, whereas the UTC time for timeA is getting set to 15:33:52. I suspect if you include a year after 1906 in your time string you'll see this 52 seconds difference disappear.
For example:
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"log"
"time"
)
func main() {
zone, err := time.LoadLocation("America/Edmonton")
if err != nil {
log.Fatalf("%v", err)
}
for _, timestring := range []string{
"01 02 1905 8:00",
"01 02 1907 8:00",
} {
timeA, err := time.ParseInLocation("01 02 2006 15:04", timestring, zone)
if err != nil {
log.Fatalf("%v", err)
}
jBytes, _ := json.Marshal(timeA)
var timeB time.Time
json.Unmarshal(jBytes, &timeB)
fmt.Printf("Time string: %s\n", timestring)
fmt.Printf("Time A: %+v, Time B: %+v\n", timeA, timeB)
fmt.Printf("Time A: %+v, Time B: %+v\n", timeA.UTC(), timeB.UTC())
fmt.Printf("Time A: %+v, Time B: %+v\n", timeA.In(zone), timeB.In(zone))
fmt.Printf("Diff: %s\n", timeA.Sub(timeB))
fmt.Printf("Marshaled: %s\n", string(jBytes))
}
}
outputs:
paul#mac:got$ ./got
Time string: 01 02 1905 8:00
Time A: 1905-01-02 08:00:00 -0733 LMT, Time B: 1905-01-02 08:00:00 -0733 -0733
Time A: 1905-01-02 15:33:52 +0000 UTC, Time B: 1905-01-02 15:33:00 +0000 UTC
Time A: 1905-01-02 08:00:00 -0733 LMT, Time B: 1905-01-02 07:59:08 -0733 LMT
Diff: 52s
Marshaled: "1905-01-02T08:00:00-07:33"
Time string: 01 02 1907 8:00
Time A: 1907-01-02 08:00:00 -0700 MST, Time B: 1907-01-02 08:00:00 -0700 -0700
Time A: 1907-01-02 15:00:00 +0000 UTC, Time B: 1907-01-02 15:00:00 +0000 UTC
Time A: 1907-01-02 08:00:00 -0700 MST, Time B: 1907-01-02 08:00:00 -0700 MST
Diff: 0s
Marshaled: "1907-01-02T08:00:00-07:00"
paul#mac:got$
showing that the 52 second difference is there for 1905, but not for 1907 after the time zone difference changed to a straight UTC-7:00:00.
Short answer: marshaling to and unmarshaling from json by default appears unable to correctly handle seconds in time zone offsets, because no seconds appear in the offset in the marshaled string and this is the only time zone information json.Unmarshal has available to it.
For sure there is no referencing of clocks, remote or otherwise, in any of this code - it's just manipulating values.

Answer 2

You are defaulting to pseudo-date 0000-01-01 when local time was likely based on the position of the Sun at midday.
Simply parse the time-of-day. For example,
package main
import (
"encoding/json"
"fmt"
"time"
)
func main() {
timeA, err := time.Parse("15:04", "8:00")
fmt.Println(timeA, err)
jBytes, _ := json.Marshal(timeA)
var timeB time.Time
json.Unmarshal(jBytes, &timeB)
fmt.Printf("Time A: %+v, Time B: %+v\n", timeA, timeB)
fmt.Printf("Diff: %s\n", timeA.Sub(timeB))
fmt.Printf("Marshaled: %s\n", string(jBytes))
}
Output:
0000-01-01 08:00:00 +0000 UTC <nil>
Time A: 0000-01-01 08:00:00 +0000 UTC, Time B: 0000-01-01 08:00:00 +0000 UTC
Diff: 0s
Marshaled: "0000-01-01T08:00:00Z"