CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#timezonetimezone-offset
Ottxr
Ottxr

Reputation: 303

Getting CEST time from the Microsoft Windows Time Zone Database

There are a lot of countries which change from CET (Central European Time) to CEST (Central European Summer Time) during DST (Daylight Saving Time).

So I thought that the Microsoft timezone database would have CEST as a time zone but I can only find CET.

CET has an UTC-Offset of +1

CEST has an UTC-Offset of +2

Would it be a problem if I would simply use another timezone with the same offset as CEST? And if so, how else am I supposed to get the CEST time from the database?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 4641

Answers (1)

Matt Johnson-Pint
Matt Johnson-Pint

Reputation: 241798

The Microsoft Windows time zones that include the word "Standard" in their identifiers, such as Pacific Standard Time, Central Europe Standard Time or W. Europe Standard Time still represent the entirety of the time zone - including periods that might be under daylight saving time (aka "summer time").

You should not choose a different time zone during the DST period.

There is only one caveat: Windows computers have a date/time setting called "Adjust for daylight saving time automatically". This is on by default, and in most cases should never be turned off. However, if a user has turned it off, then they will not get the benefit of the system understanding how to apply daylight time correctly.

In .NET (as you tagged your question C#), this behavior only surfaces on Windows through APIs that use the system-local time zone, such as DateTime.Now or TimeZoneInfo.Local. If you ask for a time zone by its identifier, DST is always applied correctly regardless of the system's DST setting.

Upvotes: 3

Related Questions