How to display the time in user's timezone

Question

I am using rails 3.0.5 and I have created_at and updated_at stored in UTC. Now I want to display the created_at time in users\' timezone. I believe it is possible to pick us

Answer 1

You can add this to your application controller to convert all times to the User's timezone:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base

  around_filter :user_time_zone, :if => :current_user
  def user_time_zone(&block)
    Time.use_zone(current_user.timezone_name, &block)
  end
end

You just have to capture the user's timezone

Answer 2

Assuming that the value you want displayed is coming from the database, :ie started_at and is (as is the default) stored in UTC.

If you have the user's timezone as an offset you can also localize the time by doing:

started_at.in_time_zone(-2)
=> Mon, 24 Feb 2014 23:07:56 GST -02:00

Which then can be munged in all sorts of way to get the parts you want:

started_at.in_time_zone(-2).yesterday
=> Sun, 23 Feb 2014 23:07:56 GST -02:00

started_at.in_time_zone(-2) + 3.days
=> Thu, 27 Feb 2014 23:07:56 GST -02:00