Convert Time from one time zone to another in Rails

Question

My created_at timestamps are stored in UTC:

>> Annotation.last.created_at
=> Sat, 29 Aug 2009 23:30:09 UTC +00:00

How

Answer 1

Set your timezone to Eastern Time.

You can set your default timezone in config/environment.rb

config.time_zone = "Eastern Time (US & Canada)"

Now all records you pull out will be in that time zone. If you need different time zones, say based on a user timezone you can change it with a before_filter in your controller.

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  before_filter :set_timezone

  def set_timezone
    Time.zone = current_user.time_zone
  end
end

Just make sure you are storing all your times in the database as UTC and everything will be sweet.