Having problems with converting my DateTime to UTC

Question

I am storing all my dates in UTC format in my database. I ask the user for their timezone and I want to use their time zone plus what I am guessing is the server time to fig

Answer 1

UTC is just a time zone that everyone agreed on as the standard time zone. Specifically, it's a time zone that contains London, England. EDIT: Note that it's not the exact same time zone; for example, UTC has no DST. (Thanks, Jon Skeet)

The only special thing about UTC is that it's much easier to use in .Net than any other time zone (DateTime.UtcNow, DateTime.ToUniversalTime, and other members).

Therefore, as others have mentioned, the best thing for you to do is store all dates in UTC within your database, then convert to the user's local time (by writing TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(time, usersTimeZone) before displaying.

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If you want to be fancier, you can geolocate your users' IP addresses to automatically guess their time zones.