CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyruby-on-rails-4
JVK
JVK

Reputation: 3912

Converting datetime with one timezone to utc

In my rails4 app, I have date given in two strings, one gives timestamp, while other gives which timezone this is in:

a = "04/23/2014 04:00"
b = "Eastern Time (US & Canada)"

I want to convert this date to utc, so that I can save it in UTC

"2014-04-23 08:00:00 UTC"

What is the best way to do it?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1150

Answers (2)

zeantsoi
zeantsoi

Reputation: 26193

Using the strptime method on the Rails DateTime class, you can parse a DateTime object from a string containing both the time and timezone (timezone is passed via the %z directive). From there, you can convert the time to UTC:

a = "04/23/2014 04:00"
b = "Eastern Time (US & Canada)"

datetime_with_tz = DateTime.strptime([a, b].join(' '), "%m/%d/%Y %H:%M %z")
#=> Wed, 23 Apr 2014 04:00:00 -0500

datetime_with_tz.utc
#=> Wed, 23 Apr 2014 09:00:00 +0000

Upvotes: 1

Bharat soni
Bharat soni

Reputation: 2786

Use the in_time_zone method of the DateTime class

Loading development environment (Rails 2.3.2)

>> now = DateTime.now.utc
=> Sun, 06 Sep 2009 22:27:45 +0000
>> now.in_time_zone('Eastern Time (US & Canada)')
=> Sun, 06 Sep 2009 18:27:45 EDT -04:00
>> quit

So for your particular example

a.in_time_zone('Eastern Time (US & Canada)')

Upvotes: 0

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