I have an AWS server that runs daily cron jobs reporting on our user base. I want to ensure my report is run for the full day the previous day in MST. Currently I use this as the code for the data quering
Time.new(Time.now.year, Time.now.month, Time.now.day).yesterday.beginning_of_day.in_time_zone('MST)..Time.new(Time.now.year, Time.now.month, Time.now.day).yesterday.end_of_day.in_time_zone('MST)
I read it is bad practice to use Time.now as that is the system (UTC) time? I am wondering if what I am doing is a big no no or if there is a more efficient way?
thank you!
Mountain Standard Time is 7 hours behind UTC, so when you capture all the data points from the day of July 22rd in MST, you want the UTC times to be from 7/22 at 7:00AM UTC to 7/23 at 7:00AM UTC.
I don't think your code is correct because you are calling in_time_zone("MST") after beginning_of_day.
When you run this code on a server that is on UTC, the evaluated times are different:
>> Time.new.yesterday.beginning_of_day.in_time_zone('MST').utc
=> 2013-07-22 00:00:00 UTC
>> Time.new.in_time_zone("MST").yesterday.beginning_of_day.utc
=> 2013-07-22 07:00:00 UTC
Here is how you can determine the start and end times properly:
>> t = Time.new
=> 2013-07-23 19:45:10 +0000
>> start_time = t.in_time_zone("MST").yesterday.beginning_of_day
=> Mon, 22 Jul 2013 00:00:00 MST -07:00
>> end_time = t.in_time_zone("MST").yesterday.end_of_day
=> Mon, 22 Jul 2013 23:59:59 MST -07:00
When we convert the start and end times to UTC, we get the desired result.
>> start_time = t.in_time_zone("MST").yesterday.beginning_of_day.utc
=> 2013-07-22 07:00:00 UTC
>> end_time = t.in_time_zone("MST").yesterday.end_of_day.utc
=> 2013-07-23 06:59:59 UTC
I don't know what you are trying to do, but
Time.new(Time.now.year, Time.now.month, Time.now.day)
is definitely a terrible code fragment. For example, if the time lag between the execution time of Time.now.year and that of Time.now.month overlaps the moment of the change of the year, then the time object created with the main Time.new will be neither of the two moments. If you want to get the current time, just do
Time.new
or
Time.now
If you are trying to create a time range calculated out of a single time, then whatever your code should be, create time only once:
t = Time.now
and use that in the rest of your code:
t.some_method..t.some_other_method
Related
I have a model with a Time attribute
create_table "opened_intervals", force: :cascade do |t|
t.time "start"
t.time "end"
An example of a value would be:
>> oi.start
=> Sat, 01 Jan 2000 06:26:00 UTC +00:00
(I am living in Germany)
If I use the current time, I get following value:
current_time = Time.now
>> current_time
=> 2019-02-14 18:36:12 +0100
If I compare the class of both objects, I have
>> current_time.class
=> Time
>> oi.start.class
=> ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone
In order to make both instances same class, I change the Time class with the .zone method
>> Time.zone.now
=> Thu, 14 Feb 2019 17:38:48 UTC +00:00
>> Time.zone.now.class
=> ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone
Now both instances have same Class.
If I compare them, I get wrong results because of the date:
>> oi.start
=> Sat, 01 Jan 2000 06:26:00 UTC +00:00
>> current_time
=> Thu, 14 Feb 2019 17:40:13 UTC +00:00
>> current_time < oi.end
=> false
I thought about creating a new Time with the hours, minutes and seconds, but then I have the same problem, Ruby always appends a Date.
Of course I could extract the hour, the minutes, the time, create an integer and compare them, but it feels too much.
How can I deal with this issue the Ruby way?
The Time object is always a time with a date? Is there no other way to achieve a Time just with the time?
What would be the best approach for this problem?
I solved it this way:
def to_integer(time)
hours = time.hour < 10 ? "0#{time.hour}" : time.hour
minutes = time.min < 10 ? "0#{time.min}" : time.min
seconds = time.sec < 10 ? "0#{time.sec}" : time.sec
"#{hours}#{minutes}#{seconds}"
end
It feels too much (I could refactor it, but still too much)
to_integer(current_time) < to_integer(oi.end)
You can just modulus the days off to get the remaining time value.
t1 = Time.now
t2 = t2 = Time.at(Time.now.to_i - (5*24*3600)) # later time in day but previous date
tod1 = t.to_i % (24*3600)
=> 69734
tod2 = t2.to_i % (24*3600)
=> 69912
we can clearly see that t2 is a later time of day or clock time if you will and the modulus operation is very clear if you know anything about the unix epoch.
How to get previous day on UTC time using ruby?
Currently I'm using Time.now.utc.iso8601 to get UTC time format in ruby, I need previous day in same UTC format. Can someone help me with sample code to get previous day?
> Time.now.utc
=> 2015-03-22 19:00:46 UTC
> Time.now.utc - 86400
=> 2015-03-21 19:00:51 UTC
> (Time.now.utc - 86400).iso8601
=> "2015-03-21T19:00:59Z"
I am capturing the current time like so:
Time.now
My server runs on UTC. How can I convert the time to EST without using any Rails libraries? I am guessing some sort of offset but not sure how it works per say.
In plain Ruby you may use Time.zone_offset method:
require 'time'
t = Time.now # 2014-07-30 18:30:00 UTC
t + Time.zone_offset('EST') # 2014-07-30 13:30:00 UTC
The fbonetti's answer leads to the proper UTC to Eastern time conversion while accepted David Unric's answer would give wrong time for 8 months in 2017 (while DST is in effect).
Let's look at the following example:
First we'll need to figure out when DST starts/ends in 2017:
As we can see on March 12th, 2017 deep in the night (2:00am) they change time by adding +1 hour, so they "jump" from 1:59:59am up to 3:00:00am instantaneously! Which means there can not be 2:30am on March 12th, 2017.
Let's choose two UTC timestamps - one before and one after that switch, then we will try to convert those two timestamps from UTC back to Eastern.
First timestamp will be safely far enough from the switch moment:
require 'time'
t1 = Time.parse("2017-03-11 15:00:00 +0000")
=> 2017-03-11 15:00:00 +0000
t1_epoch_s = t1.to_i
=> 1489244400
Second timestamp is just +24 hours from the first one:
t2 = Time.parse("2017-03-12 15:00:00 +0000")
=> 2017-03-12 15:00:00 +0000
t2_epoch_s = t2.to_i
=> 1489330800
Now let us convert t1_epoch_s and t2_epoch_s to Eastern:
method-1: by adding Time.zone_offset('EST')
wrong, gives bad result: 10am for both days :(
and offset portion is shown as "+0000" which is also misleading and would refer to completely wrong point in time for people reading our output : ((
Time.at(t1_epoch_s) + Time.zone_offset('EST')
=> 2017-03-11 10:00:00 +0000
Time.at(t2_epoch_s) + Time.zone_offset('EST')
=> 2017-03-12 10:00:00 +0000
method-2: by changing timezone
Good!! Correctly yields 10am and 11am on next day!-)
ENV['TZ'] = 'America/New_York'
Time.at(t1_epoch_s)
=> 2017-03-11 10:00:00 -0500
Time.at(t2_epoch_s)
=> 2017-03-12 11:00:00 -0400
# resetting timezone back
ENV['TZ'] = nil
Basically manually adding Time.zone_offset('EST') is like adding constant and it will give right result for about 4 months (of 12 total) during the year, but then other time you'd have to manually add Time.zone_offset('EDT'), which is another constant. It pretty much same as "a broken clock is right twice a day": )) nasty!
And just for laughter let's see the "slow mo" how proper method handles the actual +1 hour magic jump in time:
ENV['TZ'] = "America/New_York"
Time.at(1489301999 + 0)
=> 2017-03-12 01:59:59 -0500
Time.at(1489301999 + 1)
=> 2017-03-12 03:00:00 -0400
ENV['TZ'] = nil
magic-magic!
In plain ruby, the timezone is determined by the 'TZ' environment variable. You could do something like this:
ENV['TZ'] = 'America/New_York' # set the TZ to Eastern Daylight Time
time = Time.now
time.zone
# => "EDT"
# do stuff
ENV['TZ'] = nil # reset the TZ back to UTC
If you don't mind using a gem,
require 'tzinfo'
tz = TZInfo::Timezone.get('US/Eastern')
Time.now.getlocal(tz.current_period.offset.utc_total_offset)
Credit: https://stackoverflow.com/a/42702906/2441263
I want to be able to parse a Time from a string in Ruby (1.8.7), where the string does not contain any time zone information. I would like to treat the string as though it were in any of a number of time zones specified in this type of format: 'America/New_York'.
Time string example:
'2010-02-05 01:00:01'
I have spent quite a while trying to figure this one out.
I did find a similar question, but its answer does not apply in my case: How do I get Ruby to parse time as if it were in a different time zone?
The problem with the above solution is that my time zones cannot all be represented in the 3-letter format supported by Time.parse (http://www.ruby-doc.org/stdlib-1.8.7/libdoc/time/rdoc/classes/Time.html#M004931).
Is there a good way to accomplish what I'm trying to do here?
Edit: Made my answer actually appear as an answer.
require 'active_support/all'
time = ActiveSupport::TimeZone.new('UTC').parse('2010-02-05 01:00:01')
puts time
puts time.in_time_zone('EST')
Here's what I came up with using the tzinfo gem as suggested, though it seems rather complicated and unintuitive to me. As an end result I get the time parsed as though it were in the time zone I wanted, though represented by a Time object in UTC. I can also display it in the time zone I want using tzinfo's strftime:
jruby-1.6.1 :003 > time = '2010-05-01 01:00:00'
=> "2010-05-01 01:00:00"
jruby-1.6.1 :004 > tz = TZInfo::Timezone.get('America/New_York')
=> #<TZInfo::DataTimezone: America/New_York>
jruby-1.6.1 :005 > time += ' UTC'
=> "2010-05-01 01:00:00 UTC"
jruby-1.6.1 :006 > time = Time.parse(time)
=> Sat May 01 01:00:00 UTC 2010
jruby-1.6.1 :007 > time = tz.local_to_utc(time)
=> Sat May 01 05:00:00 UTC 2010
jruby-1.6.1 :010 > tz.strftime('%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S %Z', time)
=> "2010-05-01 01:00:00 EDT"
I believe this will suit my needs, but I wonder if I can get the Time to actually be in the timezone above (instead of just UTC).
You have two options the way I see it. On the one hand you could map the format you wish to use in an array (or any other structure you wish) to the 3-letter format used by Time.parse.
The other option is using the tzinfo gem as specified by my which seems to do the job quite nicely.
>> tz = TZInfo::Timezone.get("America/New_York")
=> #<TZInfo::DataTimezone: America/New_York>
>> tz.now
=> Thu Jul 07 16:29:13 UTC 2011
>> tz = TZInfo::Timezone.get("Europe/Rome")
=> #<TZInfo::DataTimezone: Europe/Rome>
>> tz.now
=> Thu Jul 07 22:30:03 UTC 2011
In Ruby 1.8.7, how to set the time zone of a time?
In the following examples, my system time zone is PST (-8:00 hours from UTC)
Given a time (21 Feb 2011, 20:45), presume that the time is in EST:
#this interprets the time as system time zone, i.e. PST
Time.local(2011,02,21,20,45)
#=> Mon Feb 21 20:45:00 -0800 2011
#this **converts** the time into EST, which is wrong!
Time.local(2011,02,21,20,45).in_time_zone "Eastern Time (US & Canada)"
#=> Mon, 21 Feb 2011 23:45:00 EST -05:00
But, the output I want is:
Mon Feb 21 20:45:00 -0500 2011 (Note the -0500 (EST) as opposed to -0800 (PST) and the hour is same, i.e. 20, not 23)
UPDATE (see the better version of this below)
I managed to get this to work, but I don't like it:
DateTime.new(2011,02,21,20,45).change :offset => -(300.0 / 1440.0)
# => Mon, 21 Feb 2011 20:45:00 +0500
Where
300 = 5 hrs x 60 minutes
1440 = number of minutes in a day
or the "right" way:
DateTime.civil(2011,02,21,20,45,0,Rational(-5, 24))
Question: Now, is there a way to determine the accurate(i.e. catering for daylight saving time etc) UTC offset from Time.zone so that I can pass it to the change method?
Reference: DateTime::change method
UPDATE (better version)
Thanks to #ctcherry for all the help!
Determine the accurate time zone info from Time.zone:
DateTime.civil(2011,02,21,20,45,0,Rational((Time.zone.tzinfo.current_period.utc_offset / 3600), 24))
In ruby 1.8.7 it doesn't appear to be very easy to do what are asking for according to the documentation:
http://www.ruby-doc.org/core-1.8.7/classes/Time.html
However in 1.9 it looks a lot easier by passing the timezone offset to the localtime() method on a Time object:
http://www.ruby-doc.org/core/classes/Time.html#M000346
UPDATE
The offset for Time.zone is easy since its an object on its own: (This is in a Rails console)
ruby-1.8.7-p248 :001 > Time.zone
=> #<ActiveSupport::TimeZone:0x103150190 #current_period=nil, #name="Central Time (US & Canada)", #tzinfo=#<TZInfo::TimezoneProxy: America/Chicago>, #utc_offset=nil>
ruby-1.8.7-p248 :002 > Time.zone.utc_offset
=> -21600
ruby-1.8.7-p248 :003 > Time.zone.formatted_offset
=> "-06:00"
So I think this will (almost) accomplish what you want:
require 'time'
t = "21 Feb 2011, 20:45"
Time.parse(t) # => Mon Feb 21 20:45:00 -0700 2011
t += " -05:00" # this is the trick
Time.parse(t) # => Mon Feb 21 18:45:00 -0700 2011
It still returns the time based on your system time zone, but the actual time is the correct time that you are seeking.
By the way, this is tested on 1.8.7-p334.