Question

I’ve seen using strings, integer timestamps and mongo datetime objects.

Answer 1

The best way is to store native JavaScript Date objects, which map onto BSON native Date objects.

> db.test.insert({date: ISODate()})
> db.test.insert({date: new Date()})
> db.test.find()
{ "_id" : ObjectId("..."), "date" : ISODate("2014-02-10T10:50:42.389Z") }
{ "_id" : ObjectId("..."), "date" : ISODate("2014-02-10T10:50:57.240Z") }

The native type supports a whole range of useful methods out of the box, which you can use in your map-reduce jobs, for example.

If you need to, you can easily convert Date objects to and from Unix timestamps¹⁾, using the getTime() method and Date(milliseconds) constructor, respectively.

¹⁾ Strictly speaking, the Unix timestamp is measured in seconds. The JavaScript Date object measures in milliseconds since the Unix epoch.