I am working on a rail4 app. Where I want to store dates in all mysql tables in UTC. However I store user's timezone in a specific table, called users. When user logs in, I get user's timezone form user table and save in session.
I am able to save date in all tables in UTC as default value of config.time_zone is UTC for activerecords and activemodels. But while displaying I want to show dates in user's timezone. As well as, when any user inputs a date/time in any html form, then I want to save it in the equivalent UTC format.
What is the best way to achieve this?
Rails, activerecord and MySQL will save all the timestamp fields in UTC. Without you having to do anything.
In your application.rb file where the configuration of the Application is done, you define the default time zone if you want the display of timestamps to take place on time zone different from UTC.
Hence
config.time_zone = 'Central Time (US & Canada)'
will display the timestamp fields (without you having to do anything special in other piece of code) using the Central Time.
When you want each of your users to have timestamps displayed in different time zone you can store the time zone in a column along side the user data. The column can be called time_zone and can contain the string of the user preferred time zone.
But, you have to tell the timestamp object to display itself to the specific timezone. This is done with the help of the method in_time_zone(timezone) that DateTime object responds to.
Example (when the default time zone is UTC):
1.9.3-p194 :004 > d = DateTime.new(2012, 9, 1, 6, 30, 0)
=> Sat, 01 Sep 2012 06:30:00 +0000
1.9.3-p194 :005 > d.in_time_zone("Central Time (US & Canada)")
=> Sat, 01 Sep 2012 01:30:00 CDT -05:00
Or you can change the time zone globally for the request at hand on a before or around filter. There is a documentation on internet if you do a google on that.
Read also this one: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/TimeWithZone.html
for various alternatives to approach the problem.
You could store the time in UTC, and store the timezone separately. Timezones are commonly stored as a UTC-offset in seconds (seconds are the SI unit of time).
Then you can display it like so:
utime = Time.now.utc.to_i # this value can be any format that Time.at can understand. In this example I'll use a unix timestamp in UTC. Chances are any time format you store in your DB will work.
=> 1375944780
time = Time.at(utime) # parses the time value (by default, the local timezone is set, e.g. UTC+08:00)
=> 2013-08-08 14:53:00 +0800
time_in_brisbane = time.in_time_zone(ActiveSupport::TimeZone[36000]) # sets the timezone, in this case to UTC+10:00 (see http://stackoverflow.com/a/942865/72176)
=> Thu, 08 Aug 2013 16:53:00 EST +10:00
time_brisbane.strftime("%d %b %Y, %l:%M %p %z") # format with strftime however you like!
=> "08 Aug 2013, 4:53 PM +1000"
Related
I'm having a frustrating issue that I can't seem to narrow down. I have searched many similar articles but they are not close enough to my issue to resolve. I am trying to pull a time from the database and display it in more than one time zone. My Rails app is using UTC as default. Here is what I'm doing:
On the create action I take the string of time which will be saved in the time column in my DB:
params[:schedule][:start] = "09:00"
Time.zone = "Central Time (US & Canada)"
#schedule.start = Time.zone.parse(params[:schedule][:start])
The above formats the time as it is supposed to:
2016-04-12 09:00:00 -0500
This is saved in the DB as:
2000-01-01 14:00:00
This has no time offset which is fine since I know it's in UTC. The problem happens when I go to display the time:
#schedule.start.in_time_zone("Central Time (US & Canada)")
This returns:
Sat, 01 Jan 2000 08:00:00 CST -06:00
Now, since this is a time column, I don't care about the date. I plan on formatting the value to only show the time. However, it is showing CST when it is currently CDT.
I can't figure out why this is happening. As I said I am not setting the Time Zone anywhere in my application.rb or anywhere else and I only set the Time zone on the create action which should be fine when moving to a new action.
Any help on clarifying this would be awesome!
This seems to be because when the time is stored it is stored with the date in the year 2000-01-01 which seems to be why it is using CST. How can I ignore the date when converting it to a particular timezone or will I need to change the column type to DateTime to get this to work properly?
It is showing CST simply because the time is read from the database including the stored date, i.e. it's read as 09:00 of Jan 1st 2000.
I guess you'd have to parse the time upon reading the attribute back. You can use a helper method in your model, for example:
# schedule model
def start_in_zone(zone)
self.start.strftime("%H:%M").in_time_zone(zone)
end
This will take only the hours and minutes part of the stored time and parse it in the given time zone with the date set to today. See this example:
"Sat, 01 Jan 2000 08:00:00".to_time.
strftime("%H:%M").
in_time_zone("Central Time (US & Canada)")
# => Tue, 12 Apr 2016 08:00:00 CDT -05:00
The fact that it matters whether it's CST or CDT means you do, on some level, care about the date. While I'm not familiar with the exact rules of Daylight Savings in that region, I do know that Jan 1 is the middle of winter and will definitely not be on Daylight Savings time.
Add the relevant date into your #schedule before putting it into a time zone, and it should fix the problem.
I have records with a created column whose datetime is stored in UTC.
For instance, this is the datetime stored in one record: 2014-02-01 00:33:25
But if I retrieve that record and confer it to CST, it'd look like this:
Article.find(1).created.in_time_zone('Central Time (US & Canada)') => Fri, 31 Jan 2014 18:33:25 CST -06:00
Which is a different day/month as far as that timezone goes.
The problem I'm having is finding records based on a date. So say I wanted to pull all records for January 31, 2014 (CST). I want to include my example record.
How do I do that in a Rails app? I'm running Rails 4.0.1 and Ruby 2.0.0 with Postgres 9.3.1.0.
Use AT TIME ZONE to change timezone
Article.where("date(created AT TIME ZONE 'UTC' AT TIME ZONE 'CST') = '01/31/2014'")
Got some help outside of SO and got what I was looking for.
Say I wanted to find all records in a date range, this is what it'd be:
Article.where(created: Date.parse("January 1, 2014").in_time_zone('Central Time (US & Canada)').beginning_of_day.utc..Date.parse("January 31, 2014").in_time_zone('Central Time (US & Canada)').end_of_day.utc)
I'm confused on how rails 3 timezones are supposed to work.
So I config rails to use Pacific time, and tell active record to store in Pacific time.
# application.rb
config.time_zone = 'Pacific Time (US & Canada)'
config.active_record.default_timezone = 'Pacific Time (US & Canada)'
Now I submit update a model and this comes through in the params:
"start_at"=>"2013-07-24 00:00:00"
From the console now:
>> Sale.last
=> #<Sale id: 24, start_at: "2013-07-24 00:00:00", ...snipped... >
>> Sale.last.start_at
=> Tue, 23 Jul 2013 17:00:00 PDT -07:00
>> Sale.last.start_at.in_time_zone
=> Tue, 23 Jul 2013 17:00:00 PDT -07:00
So after trying to force everything to Pacific time, its creating time objects form the database by factoring in the -7 hours of Pacific time.
If I set a time to 2013-07-24 00:00:00 I would expect Tue, 24 Jul 2013 00:00:00 PDT -07:00 to come back out. And yet it does not. I was having similar confusing issues when active record was using UTC to store dates. I had a few tests that would fail only after 5pm when time to date conversions yielded a different date.
How do I tame this? Storing UTC dates in the database seems like a good idea, and I can use in_time_zone on time objects for display, but does that means that times in forms must be UTC?
Our application functionality is very tied to server time, and certain thing happen every day as specific times. So forcing everything to Pacific time seems like it should be fine. But so far I can't seem to make this behave consistently.
How do I make all this not suck?
This is going to be a 1/2 answer, re-iterating from comment thread above with some additional information
I hope to update with more later. There are many gotchas with this stuff
UPDATE: finally did a blog post on rails timezones
http://jessehouse.com/blog/2013/11/15/working-with-timezones-and-ruby-on-rails/
See also: http://www.elabs.se/blog/36-working-with-time-zones-in-ruby-on-rails
i would use UTC for the application timezone and the activerecord default. Use I18n.localize method (setup formats in config/locales/en.yml) for display of dates and datetimes; set the current threads timezone based on user settings or a default (whatever makes sense for your app)
if the current thread is set to the users timezone activerecord should do the right magic and save the offset UTC value in the db, then when you display that value to the user with I18n it will display it as the user entered it (converting from UTC to the users timezone) - it gets a bit tricky when you are entering a time for say an event that is taking place in another timezone - in that case the thread needs to be set to the timezone of that location and using I18n displays need to be for the location instead of the user
setting current users timezone
see http://railscasts.com/episodes/106-time-zones-revised which uses around filter
example below uses before_filter
both assume a time_zone column on the user account
some code
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
protect_from_forgery
# auth the user
before_filter :authenticate_user!
# Set user's time zone
before_filter :set_user_time_zone
# ....
def set_user_time_zone
if current_user and current_user.time_zone.present?
Time.zone = current_user.time_zone
# else some default?
end
end
end
Alternatively - set based on browser settings, etc...
see http://guides.rubyonrails.org/i18n.html
specifically: http://guides.rubyonrails.org/i18n.html#setup-the-rails-application-for-internationalization
display date times
Use I18n.localize aka I18n.l or just l - see http://guides.rubyonrails.org/i18n.html#adding-date-time-formats
changing the timezone display for part of a view
User is set to Pacific but showing an event time for an event taking place in Eastern
Time.use_zone(event.location.time_zone) do
puts event.start_time
end
WARNING: I have found the above does not work correctly if event was pulled using find_by_sql method, regular active record queries work well
In my MySQL database the updated_at field is being stored as UTC. Last week a record was entered at 7pm EDT and it's updated_at value is "2012-08-01 23:00:00". I'm trying to convert local time for a web client to UTC that can be compared against the updated_at field in the database.
As an example, I'd like to convert '08/01/2012 07:00 pm' to '2012-08-01 23:00:00' (accounting for me being in EDT) but I'm missing the time zone aspect to the conversion. '7:00 pm' is local time and could be from any time zone. My current code:
ruby-1.9.2-head :015 > from_date = DateTime.strptime('08/01/2012 07:00 pm', '%m/%d/%Y %H:%M %p')
=> Wed, 01 Aug 2012 19:00:00 +0000
ruby-1.9.2-head :016 > from_date = Time.zone.parse(from_date.to_s).utc
=> 2012-08-01 19:00:00 UTC
Any thoughts?
Edit: Also, I could use "%Z" in my strptime call but that's assuming I have the timezone in the value, which I currently do not. I guess I could use Javascript to send that along with the date/time value.
local to utc
created_at.utc
utc to local
created_at.localtime
First I would check your time zone setting.
In your environment.rb (Rails 2) or application.rb (Rails 3) file, you can set the default timezone with: config.time_zone = 'Eastern Daylight Time (EDT)'
Secondly I would look at this post for information and guidance and tips to meet your needs:
http://databasically.com/2010/10/22/what-time-is-it-or-handling-timezones-in-rails/
i've got a Course model, which has a datetime attribute. If I look at it from the database i get one time, and if i look at it from the object i get a different date & time.
>> Course.last.attribute_for_inspect :datetime
=> "\"2012-01-04 01:00:00\""
>> Course.last.datetime
=> Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:00:00 CST -06:00
Does anyone know why this value is different, and what I can do to fix it? The time from Course.last.datetime is correct, but my queries on the course table aren't working correctly due to the mix-up.
From the fine manual:
attribute_for_inspect(attr_name)
Returns an #inspect-like string for the value of the attribute attr_name.
[...]
Date and Time attributes are returned in the :db format.
So, when attribute_for_inspect is used for a datetime, it will return the string that the database uses for that value. Rails stores times in the database in UTC and any sensible database will use ISO 8601 for formatting timestamps on the way in and out.
2012-01-04 01:00:00 is the UTC timestamp in ISO 8601 format. When Rails returns a datetime, it converts it to an ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone instance and includes a timezone adjustment based on the timezone that you have configured in your application.rb. You're using the CST timezone and that's six hours behind UTC; subtracting six hours from 01:00 gives you 19:00 and you lose a day from crossing midnight. The human friendly format, Tue, 03 Jan 2012 19:00:00 CST -06:00, is just how ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone represents itself when inspected and the console uses x.inspect to display x.
As far as fixing your queries goes, just use t.utc before sending in a time t and you should be good.
Configuring your Rails App Timezone in application.rb
set config.active_record.default_timezone to :local as it is set to :utc by default in the application.rb
paste this code in your application.rb
config.active_record.default_timezone = :local #or :utc
config.time_zone = "Singapore" #your timezone