ISO 8601 is the international standard for representing dates and times as strings: `2024-06-10T14:30:00Z` (UTC) or with explicit offset (`2024-06-10T14:30:00+02:00`). Unambiguous, sortable lexicographically, and the format every modern API uses (REST, GraphQL, JSON Schema). Standardized in 1988; the JavaScript `Date.toISOString()` and Python `datetime.isoformat()` both emit it.
How to open
Any text editor or programming language. To parse: every language ships a function (`new Date(iso)` in JS, `datetime.fromisoformat(iso)` in Python 3.11+).