In this app, a user enters a date. To be friendly, the user can enter dates in any time zone. (The source data may be in any number of time zones, so this isn't a sticky preference, it could vary on each date they submit.) This date and time in the arbitrary time zone though, should then be converted to UTC and stored in the database. Sounds easy.
Let's say I have an example simple view:
<% form_for(@event) do |f| %> <%= time_zone_select nil, :time_zone, ActiveSupport::TimeZone.us_zones %> <%= f.datetime_select :start %> ... many other model fields ... <% end %>
In the response, it'd roughly be this simple:
def method @event = Event.find(params[:id])
if @event.update_attributes(params[:event]) yay end end
...except that doing this, Rails interprets the datetime the user entered in my configured default time zone (UTC). Instead, I need to use the time zone the user specified. So after failing to find any good way to do this, it seems to me, the shortest way to do this is:
def method @event = Event.find(params[:id])
zone = ActiveSupport::TimeZone.new(params[:time_zone]) yr = params[:event][:"start(1i)"].to_i mon = params[:event][:"start(2i)"].to_i day = params[:event][:"start(3i)"].to_i hr = params[:event][:"start(4i)"].to_i min = params[:event][:"start(5i)"].to_i sec = 0 off = zone.utc_offset / 86400.0
@event.attributes = params[:event] @event.start = DateTime.civil(yr, mon, day, hr, min, sec, off)
if @event.save yay end end
I can obviously make a separate method to factor out creating a date with the given time zone, but there has to be a better way overall of doing this.
Any suggestions?
