How can I setLocaleHours() on a date object? - javascript

When I execute
myDate = new Date('2000-02-02 12:30:00')
I get a date object like this 2000-02-02T11:30:00.000Z because there is a difference of one hour between my timezone (Europe/Vienna) and UTC.
I can now change the hour by doing
myDate.setHours(10)
and the result will be a date object like this 2000-02-02T09:30:00.000Z because of the one hour difference.
I can also set the UTC hours by
myDate.setUTCHours(10)
to get a dateobject like this 2000-02-02T10:30:00.000Z
I'm looking for something similar to
myDate.setLocaleHours(10, "America/New_York")
(which doesn't exist)
What is the best way to set the hours to a specific value in a timezone which is not my current one and also not UTC?

How can I setLocaleHours() on a date object?
What is the best way to set the hours to a specific value in a timezone which is not my current one and also not UTC?
You can't. At least, not on the Date object. It has no ability to set time based on an arbitrary time zone.
There is work in progress to rectify this, by adding a new set of standard objects to ECMAScript. See the TC39 Temporal proposal for more details. The temporal ZonedInstant will have functionality to work with named time zones.
However, for now, you will need a library that understands time zones. Moment-timezone is one option, though, these days the Moment team recommends Luxon for modern app development. Another great option is js-Joda.

Related

Append timezone to time which is a date Object

I am working on customizing primeng component for my requirement I came across a problem where I had to select a time and also select the time zone it should not affect the time selected but has to update the timezone as shown in the picture
I want to update only the timezone which is GMT to UTC as per selection
is there any way to update timezone without changing the date I tried finding a solution but failed please help on the problem
NOTE: I have customized the TIMEZONE selection
you can use toISOString() of basic JS date object (check for date docs) and then change it as you want.
But I recommend you to use external library (if possible with immutable instances of datetime) even if you do not prefer to. Especially when your application will be strongly dependent on resolving multiple timezones.
What about setUTCHours()?
let today = new Date(Date.now());
console.log(today.toISOString());
today.setUTCHours(10);
console.log(today.toISOString());
Also using new Date(Date.UTC(year, month, day, hour, minute, second)) you can create a new date object from a specific UTC time.
https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/JavaScript/Reference/Global_Objects/Date/UTC
This article can help you as well.

Determining the day of the week for specified date in an arbitrary timezone with momentJS

Say I had an ISO date string with embedded timezone information, like "2016-08-22T13:30:00-07:00" (Here, the -07:00 specifies PST). I'm looking for an elegant way to determine what day of the week it will be in that timezone on that date and time. I've tried moment.parseZone(datestring).weekday() to no avail. How can I make moment think in terms of the timezone specified in the string, instead of wherever the server happens to be?
You can try moment(datestring).utcOffset(datestring).weekday(), check the docs for more explanation. Also there is a part of the documntation on weekday which describes it as locale aware I am not sure if it maintains the time zone of the date while converting or defaults to your local/server location, I usually uses moment.day(), if it suits your use case, you can use it instead of weekday().

JavaScript: How to set a date so that it looks the same all over the world?

One of our programmers decided to use a DATE field in the MySQL db in order to achieve this.
Sending and saving a JS date object did work well until the daylight saving changes intervened (with nasty effects :) ).
Of course, saving the date in a DATETIME field solves it, but everybody sees the time/dates in their own timezone.
We need everybody (all over the timezones) to see the same date!
I clarify this, to get the proper answers:
I want to keep using the DATE field storage type in MySQL (vs DATETIME - ok, maybe too much of an optimization, but it's already there and I want a long term solution for when I receive such structure/code from other developers)
Sending local time (local JS in browser) 23-05-2016, will reach the server as 22-05-2016 0X:X0:00Z (UTC) and be store as such. Because it's a DATE field, the stored value will become 22-05-2016 only. And you lost a day! :)
Our solution from bellow not only fixes the DATE field trimming, but also adds the fact that people now can see the same correct date (23-05-2016) no matter of the timezone they are in!
I like the outcome and would love to see some better solutions to achieve the same and improve the system.
Actually, we have noticed the problem only when the daylight saving time changed, so my solution (as answer bellow) is a good solution for that as well. And it only consumes resources client-side.
I have posted my own solution to this question as an answer bellow.
It would be really cool to see a much better solution from you!
With Javascript
Save your dates in ISO format (including timezone information) and use moment.js to convert the datetime to another timezone.
If moment.js is not already a dependency, and you want to avoid extra libraries, keep reading.
With MySQL
Instead of solving this problem when you write the data (losing timezone information in the process), solve it when you read the database.
In your SELECT query, normalize all DATETIME values to your preferred timezone using the convert_tz built-in function.
MomentJs is your best bet. Find the timezone you want and pass the ISO string to it and you should be good to go.
http://momentjs.com/timezone/docs/#/using-timezones/
A DATE is just a year, month, and day. It doesn't have a time, or a time zone. Think about your birthday or your wedding date, or today's date.
The JS Date object is not this at all. It's a timestamp. It's the number of milliseconds elapsed since Midnight January 1st 1970 UTC.
You should leave your date as a date-only wherever possible. Use the ISO-8601 date-only format, which is YYYY-MM-DD. If you have to assign it a time and time zone, then be very careful when you do.
If you just assign midnight local time, then you're risking losing a day (as you showed), and you're not considering that there are local days in some time zones where midnight does not exist! (Such as the spring-forward day in Brazil). Noon is a safer bet than Midnight, but still you should use this sparingly. The better approach is to keep dates as dates, not as date-times.
Also, I'd answer with code if I could, but you didn't provide any code in your question showing what was broken. Please read How do I ask a good question? and How to create a Minimal, Complete, and Verifiable example. Thanks.
There are more solutions to this, but the fastest and easiest that I could come up with is described bellow:
Let's intervene as early as possible in the information stream.
Just change the data before transmitting it through AJAX.
The function we used is this:
function addTimezoneDiffAnd12HoursToDate(date) {
var timezoneOffset = date.getTimezoneOffset();
date.setHours(12-Math.floor(timezoneOffset/60));
date.setMinutes(-timezoneOffset % 60);
return date;
}
What it does is that it converts a Date to be always at noon (12:00) UTC!
You can use it like this:
$scope.contract.contractDate = addTimezoneDiffAnd12HoursToDate($scope.contract.contractDate);
and send it as such to be stored in the DATE field.
Let me know if you have a simpler solution. I'd like to see it.

Javascript date object in different locale and timezone

I need to write a web application that show events of people in different locale. I almost finished it, but there're 2 problems with date:
using date javascript object, the date depends on user computer settings and it's not reliable
if there's an event in a place with dfferent timezone respect user current position, i have to print it inside (). Is it possible in javascript to build a date object with a given timezone and daylight settings?
I also find some workaround, such as jsdate and date webservices, but they don't overcome the problem of having a javascript object with the correct timezone and daylight settings (for date operation such as adding days and so on).
A couple of things to keep in mind.
Store all event datetimes in UTC time
Yes, there is no getting around this.
Find out all the timezones...
...of all the users in the system. You can use the following detection script: http://site.pageloom.com/automatic-timezone-detection-with-javascript. It will hand you a timezone key such as for example "America/Phoenix".
In your case you need to store the timezone together with the event, since a user may switch timezone - but the event will always have happened in a specific one. (argh)
Choose your display mechanism
If you want to localize your event dates with Javascript, there is a nifty library for that too (which can use the keys supplied with the previous script). Here: https://github.com/mde/timezone-js.
with that library you can for example do this:
var dt = new timezoneJS.Date(UTC_TIMESTAMP, 'America/New_York');
or
var dt = new timezoneJS.Date(2006, 9, 29, 1, 59, 'America/Los_Angeles');
where UTC_TIMESTAMP for example could be 1193855400000. And America/New_Yorkis the timezone you have detected when the event took place.
The dt object that you get from this will behave as a normal JavaScript Date object. But will automatically "correct" itself to the timezone you have specified (including DST).
If you want to, you can do all the corrections in the backend - before you serve the page. Since I don't know what programming language you are using there, I cannot give you any immediate tips. But basically it follows the same logic, if you know the timezone, and the UTC datetime -> you can localize the datetime. All programming languages have libraries for that.
You're missing the point of a Date object. It represents a particular point in time. As I speak, it is 1308150623182 all over the world. Timezone only comes into play when you want to display the time to the user. An operation like "adding a day" does not involve the time zone at all.
One possibility might be to use UTC date and time for everything. That way, there is nothing to convert.
Another is to have your server provide the time and date. Then you don't have to depend on the user to have it set correctly, and you don't have to worry about where your user's timezone is.
Use getUTCDate(), getUTCHours(), ... instead of getDate(), getHours(),...
getTimetoneOffset() could be useful, too.

How to find browser date time format [duplicate]

I have set a deadline in UTC, as shown below, and I'm wondering what exactly the toLocaleString() method will do to it on user's local machines. For instance, will it account for daylight savings if they are in a timezone that recognizes it? Or will I need to insert additional code that checks where the user is, and then fixes the displayed time?
http://javascript.about.com/library/bldst.htm
var deadline = new Date('5/1/2013 ' + "16:15" + ' UTC');
alert(deadline.toLocaleString());
In general, the answer is yes. JavaScript will represent the UTC value at the appropriate local time based on the time zone settings of the computer it is running on. This includes adjustment for DST. However, as others have pointed out, the details are implementation specific.
If you want a consistent output, I would use a library to format your dates instead of relying on the default implementation. The best library (IMHO) for this is moment.js. The live examples on their main page will give you an idea of what it can do.
UPDATE
If you are passing UTC values that you want converted to the correct local time, and that time falls into a period where the time zone rules are different than the current one - then the results will be invalid. This is crazy, but true - and by design in the ECMA spec. Read - JavaScript Time Zone is wrong for past Daylight Saving Time transition rules
We don't know what exactly the toLocaleString method does (§15.9.5.5):
This function returns a String value. The contents of the String are
implementation-dependent, but are intended to represent the Date in
the current time zone in a convenient, human-readable form that
corresponds to the conventions of the host environment’s current
locale.
But yes, most implementations will consider DST if it is active in the current local timezone. For your example I'm getting "Mittwoch, 1. Mai 2013 18:15:00" - CEST.
Will I need to insert additional code that checks where the user is, and then fixes the displayed time?
I think you can trust toLocaleString - the browser should respect the user's settings. If you want to do it manually, check out timezone.js.
As you use "UTC" the date itself will be UTC format, but the toLocaleString() takes client's locale into account, which means it'll return the date in string updated with all and every changes typical to client's regional and locale settings (DST, date/time format, etc).As JS documentation describes this: "The toLocaleString() method converts a Date object to a string, using locale settings.".If you want to avoid this, use the toUTCString() method instead.I'd also recommend reading the accepted solution for the question Javascript dates: what is the best way to deal with Daylight Savings Time? to avoid (at least, to try to avoid :) future issues related to JS, browsers and locales.Hope this helps!

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