I can't figure out how to make user input for a time field local. I'm creating events in a form with a start_time and an end_time. I'd like to bring in a time from a time field, and store the user's input as their local time. I'd then like to convert it to UTC and compare it to Time.now.utc, in order to determine whether or not the event has started or ended.
I thought about converting the start and end times with start_time.localtime, and then adding/subtracting that from start_time (the default for time_field inputs is UTC), and storing that offset as a variable. Then add/subtract that offset from my stored times, and compare to Time.now (which the default is local).
This seems like much more work than is necessary, as I'm sure this is a common function that people need to use. Is there some local_time_field implementation for forms that I haven't been able to find, or any other overlooked simple solutions?
Any input is appreciated. Thanks!
The most direct way to get at the user's locale is in the browser, with JS. new Date(userDateString).getTimeZoneOffset() will return the user's offset in minutes from UTC. You can use that to convert the times to UTC before sending them up to the server. Of course, this won't work if you need to support JS-less users. Those users will need some other approach--you could make a "my time-zone" dropdown, for example.
Whatever approach you take, you'll have far fewer headaches if you only store times in UTC. Convert user-local times to UTC as early as possible in processing, and only convert back to the user's locale when you're about to display it. Otherwise you have to deal with not only time zones but also DST, and it's a huge headache.
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I need to store datetime records with IANA database current version used (2022g for example). How could I get it with Go?
I tried to search this on standard "time" package, but it seems that there isn't any functionality for this. I am expecting that there is some function that can return IANA tzdb version as a string.
UPDATE 1 according to comments below I need to clarify the problem:
The main problem is I want to store some FUTURE events. The event object has several fields:
Local dateTime
Timezone
UTC datetime
To keep my data up to date with IANA database (timezone, daylight saving time may change) I need to store current version of tzdb version. That will help me to write correct data migration of my events when new version of tzdb was released. So I need to add one more field with version of current tzdb that had been used to populate the time.
And I am trying to figure out how can I get the current version of my tzdb that Go application is using right now to store that version.
Also I am opened to alternative solutions of storing time records with extra accuracy of long-lived future events.
Update 2: This events are bounded to exact location.
The discussion thread in the comment is pretty long, but I'll attempt to answer and address some of the concerns. (I won't address the question in the title, as I believe that is not straightforward in Go.)
Indeed, future scheduling of events should be in terms of the time zone where the event takes place - which is usually not UTC.
Time zone identifiers will never be removed or renamed (with rare exception anyway). Once introduced, the identifier will either maintained as a Zone or as a Link in the TZDB indefinitely. Thus, you don't need to check that the time zone still exists. (Windows time zone IDs are also like this.)
DST is only one aspect of picking the correct offset. The standard time may have changed as well. However, all of that is encapsulated in the tzdb itself. You shouldn't need to concern yourself about which version of the tzdb was in effect when you created the event.
The general approach to this issue in most cases is:
Store the scheduled local date, time, and time zone ID of the event (local with regard to the time zone of the event).
Example: 2030-12-31T00:00:00[America/New_York]
At the time you create the event, also calculate a UTC value (or equivalent DateTimeOffset value) and store that in a separate field - so you know exactly when to fire the event:
Example: 2030-12-31T05:00:00Z (or 2030-12-31T00:00:00-05:00)
Periodically check that your UTC equivalent is correct. This can be in a daily maintenance task, or on application startup, or just before the event (perhaps also an hour before the event), or all of these.
The offset will only be different than projected if the time zone data changed on the device to give it a new offset. For example, let's hypothetically say the lawmakers in the USA succeed at making DST permanent sometime before this event takes place. Then the equivalent UTC time for the same event would now be 2030-12-31T04:00:00Z (or 2030-12-31T00:00:00-04:00).
In such cases, update the UTC time of the event if it has changed, but the original local time of the event usually should not be modified. Human beings tend to schedule things in terms of local time, not in terms of their UTC equivalents.
The only advantage knowing the TZDB version would give you, is you could do that last step less often - only when knowing the data has changed. I see that as an optimization though - it's not usually required.
Without such legal changes to time zone definitions, the mere start/stop of DST as scheduled is not a reason to worry about this. That is already accounted for by using the TZDB in the first place.
If the event is recurring (say a 10:00 AM daily meeting), each occurrence might have a different offset, but the local time will be consistent and the TZDB doesn't need to be updated to calculate it.
In some cases, the bot may have knowledge of the user's timezone. Is there a way to pass this knowledge to the bot framework so that it can handle certain date forms correctly - e.g. "tomorrow" & "yesterday"? Even things like "next friday" are sometimes sensitive to the timezone.
Currently, it appears that these are handled assuming the user's timezone offset is zero.
It seems that the chronic parser is unreachable so you can't really change anything to that. I see 3 solutions.
Solution 1: Create your own RecognizeDateTime class to work with utc time or however you want.
Solutions 2: When you get the date (in the validation method for example) add the utc offset to the time. This will preserve the right date, for utc times and local times.
dateTime += TimeZone.CurrentTimeZone.GetUtcOffset(dateTime);
solution 3: When the datetime is created by using a string like "yesterday", the day is correct but the time defaults to 00:00 or 12AM. To make this less sensitive you can just add 12 hours to the UTC time. This will preserve the day in almost all timezones. (All timezones above 12+ will have a problem. Luckily there aren't many people there.) (This is the solution I'm currently using for one of my solutions)
Perhaps this question should be broken up into two posts, but I currently have an API for a few business customers. I am currently using ISO 8601 timestamps with a UTC time zone to represent times. However, I don't like the idea of these timestamps being attached to any timezone because the times should be the same no matter what timezone you are in. 5PM UTC should be 5PM CST, etc...
I know that you can leave the Z off of an ISO timestamp, and it will be interpreted as whatever local time you are in. Is this ok practice? And if so, how do I do this in Ruby? I read the doc for the Time class and didn't see anything about this.
EDIT: Let me re-word this just a little bit, or atleast clarify something. The reason why I'm seeking timestamps that aren't attached to a timezone is exactly because I know that my client servers and API server will hardly ever match up. If a client is submitting an event with a time, that time needs to be ambiguously equal to the ambiguous locale specific to the event that the user is working on.
That's a mouthful...assume that I'm working on an event scheduler. Each event belongs to a storefront or location of a company. When times are being shown for a location, it is assumed that the times shown are in the timezone of the location, and for clarity's sake should never be shown at a time formatted to a user's local timezone. If I'm looking at the scheduler on the East Coast, but looking at events for locations on the West Coast, the times I should see should be local to the locations on the West Coast, not adjusted for my timezone.
I know a solution could be to simply store times with timezone information for the location its associated to. But the use case that a user would want to convert a time to their timezone is VERY rare, and I'd rather make implementing my API easier...this was actually my original implementation but implementing the API in many different environments and across multiple programming languages, it became clear that it is a hurdle to show times local to that timestamp's timezone for a lot of languages. If a user wanted to convert times to their local timezone I could easily store global timezone information for the location object itself.
I don't know what you mean by "the times should be the same no matter what timezone you are in. 5PM UTC should be 5PM CST, etc..". 5PM UTC clearly isn't 5PM CST!
Anyway, I don't think that what you are proposing is an ok practice. Suppose you leave off the Z and have a timestamp be interpreted as whatever local time you are in. Since this is a network API, the client and server might not be in the same timezone. When the client submits a "local" time, what does it mean? The local time on the client (if so, how does the server know what that is?)? The local time on the server? It's ambiguous. This is the crux of the reason why just about the only reasonable thing to do is to use UTC throughout.
What you can do is attach a timezone to a timestamp if it might be relevant. For example, "you should observe one minute of silence at 2012-11-10T22:00:00Z in honour of the soldiers who died in WW1" sounds weird because Rememberance Day isn't on November 10! "you should observe one minute of silence at 2012-11-11T11:00:00+13:00" sounds a lot better once you put that New Zealand time zone in there... In this case you can keep and timestamp (in either local or UTC) together with the timezone offset (e.g. store both of them together in your database).
It does, however, depend on what your times represent. For example, in "at equinoxes, sunset happens at 18:00" it makes sense to use an abstract time that isn't qualified with a timezone (it's true in every timezone, and/or you're talking about solar time). But attaching a date to this abstract time makes little sense, so I don't think you would be talking about ISO8601 in this case.
I'm working on an app that will be used by the public services (ambulance). Since those people work around the clock, they will realistically need to enter date/time values at ANY time of the day. Which also includes DST changeover times.
Now, when entering the time at the "short" day, things are easy. Simply any value between 3:00:00 and 3:59:59 is invalid. Problem is with the "long" day, where values in that same interval are ambiguous.
Is there any standard way/notation for entering time at that dreadful hour? Have you ever used any other workarounds, and which ones did your users find good?
Added: Also cloned on ux.stackexchange.
Allow the user to enter the localised time (i.e. whatever their PC clock is displaying) but save it in UTC. When you display them remember to use a localised time method and it will fix itself, see this SO Question for more details: How to display localized date and time information to web users with ASP.NET
I wonder if, when you call something like that
time();
it returns the timestamp relatively to your time zone setting or to UTC ?
For example, when syncing two agents, that must be important to take care of it, doesn't it ?
You are absolutely right that the time needs to be adjusted for users at different locations.
First, you need to be able to know
what timezone each agent is in, which you cannot really guess, but ask the client to include the info in the request.
Then, depending on the language you
are using, you can either call some
function with the timezone offset as
the parameter to get the adjusted time, or calculate the
time yourself by adding
60*60*1000*offset milliseconds to the
UTC time.
In python e.g. time.time
[r]eturns the time as a floating point number expressed in seconds since the epoch, in UTC.