Many functions in the ChartDirector API accept dates/times as parameters, in which the dates/times are represented as the seconds elapsed since 1-1-0001 00:00:00.

ChartDirector provides a function perlchartdir::chartTime that returns a ChartDirector date/time (seconds elapsed since 1-1-0001 00:00:00) given the year, month, day, hour, minute and second components of a date.

A common date/time format used in some systems is to represent dates/times as seconds elapsed since 1-1-1970 00:00:00 GMT in 32-bit integers. ChartDirector does not use this time format because it cannot represent dates before the year 1970, which may be necessary for charting applications. Instead, ChartDirector provides a function perlchartdir::chartTime2 for converting this time format to ChartDirector's date/time format.