CODEWITHSUNDEEP
c#.netasp.net-mvcdatetime
Jon
Jon

Reputation: 40032

DateTime.Now represented as GMT Time on a PST Server

I am storing information in a database and setting my POCO's property to DateTime.Now.

When this value is displayed it is appearing as the PST time. I would like it to to display as GMT time.

Do I do something like this to display/store it or is there a better way? 

TimeZoneInfo tz = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("GMT");  
var GMTTime = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(DateTime.Now, tz));

Also it needs to consider Daylight Savings as UK changes its clocks at different times in the year than USA:

UPDATE: I have found that in the TimeZone setting you can pass either GMT Standard Time or Greenwich Mean Time, the first taking into account DST

Upvotes: 4

Views: 5060

Answers (4)

Joshua Duxbury
Joshua Duxbury

Reputation: 5260

You could add it into an extension method to make it nicer

public static DateTime ConvertToGreenwichMeanTime(this DateTime utcDateTime)
{
    return TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeFromUtc(utcDateTime, TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("GMT Standard Time"));
}

Then just call it

DateTime.UtcNow.ConvertToGreenwichMeanTime();

Upvotes: 0

Boas Enkler
Boas Enkler

Reputation: 12557

Have a look at DateTimeOffset.

I'd propose to change your DateTime property to this type

MSDN DateTime vs. DateTimeOffSet

Upvotes: 1

shelleybutterfly
shelleybutterfly

Reputation: 3247

there's DateTime.UtcNow if that meets your needs.

Upvotes: 1

Sander
Sander

Reputation: 26374

Store it as UTC. It's designed for universal timezone-independent time.

DateTime currentUtcTime = DateTime.UtcNow;
DateTime localTime = currentUtcTime.ToLocalTime();
DateTime backToUtcAgain = localTime.ToUniversalTime();

Whether a given DateTime is already UTC or local time is determined by DateTime.Kind. You have to keep this in mind when serializing/deserializing DateTime values (e.g from a database) because this information is often not stored and when you get your DateTime back, it will most of the time have the value DateTimeKind.Unspecified, which may cause issues with conversion methods. I just make sure to force DateTimeKind.Utc when I load something in from a persistent data store.

Upvotes: 6

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