Support flexible datetime formats in job creation/update forms

[knutties]

Summary

This PR improves the user experience of the job creation and update forms by accepting flexible datetime formats from HTML <input type="datetime-local"> elements, while also standardizing API error responses for malformed JSON requests.

Key Changes

• Added flexible datetime deserialization module (flexible_datetime in job.rs):

  • Accepts both RFC 3339 timestamps (e.g., 2026-06-09T17:18:00Z) and HTML datetime-local values (e.g., 2026-06-09T17:18)
  • Treats timezone-less values as UTC
  • Replaces opaque "premature end of input" serde errors with clear, actionable error messages
  • Includes comprehensive unit tests covering all supported formats and error cases

• Applied flexible datetime deserialization to timestamp fields:

  • CreateJob: run_at, starts_at, ends_at
  • UpdateJob: starts_at, ends_at

• Standardized JSON deserialization error responses in the API:

  • Added json_error_handler to convert actix-web's default plaintext error messages into the structured { "error": { code, message, request_id } } format used throughout the API
  • Returns HTTP 400 (Bad Request) with consistent error shape for malformed JSON payloads

Implementation Details

The flexible datetime parser tries formats in order:

1. RFC 3339 with timezone offset or Z suffix
2. Datetime-local format with seconds (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS)
3. Datetime-local format without seconds (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM)

This allows the dashboard's job form to work seamlessly with HTML5 datetime-local inputs while maintaining backward compatibility with RFC 3339 timestamps from other clients.

https://claude.ai/code/session_01TYy8xee53T2SBYFf5ifgjq

Summary by CodeRabbit

Release Notes

• New Features

  • Job scheduling now accepts flexible datetime input formats, including local datetime strings and optional fields that can be omitted or left empty.

• Improvements

  • API now returns structured JSON error responses with error codes, messages, and request IDs for malformed JSON requests.

[coderabbitai]

No actionable comments were generated in the recent review. 🎉

ℹ️ Recent review info

⚙️ Run configuration

Configuration used: Organization UI

Review profile: CHILL

Plan: Pro

Run ID: 2e8c9c31-3b17-4c40-a2a0-10990b50d472

📥 Commits

Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between f44bf96 and 75c1b7b.

📒 Files selected for processing (2)

• crates/api/src/main.rs
• crates/common/src/models/job.rs

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Walkthrough

This PR improves API request handling by adding a custom JSON error formatter and enabling job timestamps to accept dashboard-compatible datetime formats. The error handler structures malformed JSON responses; the flexible datetime module parses RFC 3339 or local datetime strings for job creation and updates.

Changes

API Request Handling Improvements

Layer / File(s)	Summary
JSON payload error handler crates/api/src/main.rs	Custom json_error_handler function intercepts JsonPayloadError and returns a structured JSON error response with code, message, and request ID; registered via web::JsonConfig::default().error_handler(...) in the Actix app.
Flexible datetime deserialization crates/common/src/models/job.rs	Private flexible_datetime module accepts RFC 3339 timestamps or dashboard-emitted datetime-local strings (YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM or YYYY-MM-DDTHH:MM:SS) as UTC; CreateJob and UpdateJob apply the deserializer to run_at and starts_at fields with serde default and deserialize_with attributes.

Estimated code review effort

🎯 2 (Simple) | ⏱️ ~12 minutes

Poem

🐰 Timestamps now bend to the dashboard's will,
And errors speak truth in JSON so chill,
Where flexible parsing meets error so clear,
The API improves, handlers are here! ✨

🚥 Pre-merge checks | ✅ 5

✅ Passed checks (5 passed)

Check name	Status	Explanation
Description Check	✅ Passed	Check skipped - CodeRabbit’s high-level summary is enabled.
Title check	✅ Passed	The title clearly describes the main change: adding support for flexible datetime formats in job creation/update forms, which matches the primary objective of accepting HTML datetime-local values alongside RFC 3339 timestamps.
Docstring Coverage	✅ Passed	Docstring coverage is 100.00% which is sufficient. The required threshold is 80.00%.
Linked Issues check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.
Out of Scope Changes check	✅ Passed	Check skipped because no linked issues were found for this pull request.

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✨ Finishing Touches

📝 Generate docstrings

• Create stacked PR
• Commit on current branch

🧪 Generate unit tests (beta)

• Create PR with unit tests
• Commit unit tests in branch claude/keen-cerf-gc48aq

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