I've inherited a problem. A front end calendar application that I have to update is treating every event as being in unix time. No matter what timezone the calendar is meant to be displayed in.
Our DB saves every event as unix time.
The calendar will assume that if I create an event at 7:00 PM it is 7:00 PM UTC. How would I go about converting this from 7:00 PM UTC to 7:00 PM [selected timezone] so that when it gets to the DB it'll be saved in the proper unix time stamp.
Tools available: Moment (with timezone), jquery.
Related
I'm running into a timezone issue when running my Flows on a schedule - and I can't seem to find a solution for it.
My timezone is currently +10:00 from UTC - Sydney, Australia.
For simplicities sake, I have a reoccurrence trigger running at 06:00 (6am local time) and 12:00 (12pm local time).
When I run my Actions - anything that needs a StartTime and an EndTime - I pass in the following parameters:
StartTime
Endtime
formatDateTime(utcNow(), 'yyyy-MM-dd"T"22:00:00.0000000Z')
formatDateTime( addDays(utcNow(), 1), 'yyyy-MM-dd"T"08:00:00.0000000Z')
The 22:00:00.0000000Z and 08:00:00.0000000Z above translate directly to 8am and 6pm respectively - essentially the entire work day hours.
Issue
When the trigger runs on the first occurrence, the StartTime and the EndTime are outputted to these values:
Tigger time - local
UTC date time
Start time UTC parameter
End time UTC parameter
2022-09-27 06:00
2022-09-26 20:00
2022-09-26T22:00:00.000000Z
2022-09-27T08:00:00.000000Z
When the trigger runs on the second occurrence, the StartTime and the EndTime are outputted to these values:
Tigger time - local
UTC date time
Start time UTC parameter
End time UTC parameter
2022-09-27 12:00
2022-09-27 02:00
2022-09-27T22:00:00.000000Z
2022-09-28T08:00:00.000000Z
Because the UTC date time has ticked over past midnight, the date value (dd) is now the next day due to the addDays(utcNow(), 1) expression.
This causes issues on the scripting of the Flow as when limiting the StartTime and EndTime of other actions, depending on when the Trigger runs is either looking at the local time's "Today" events or "Tomorrow" events.
For example, if I schedule an Out of Office / Automatic reply - and I schedule it to run on the 06:00 trigger, it will set my Automatic Reply to today - local time - 8am to 6pm. However, when it runs at the second trigger, 12:00 it will set my Automatic Reply to tomorrow - local time - 8am to 6pm.
Though this is not how I am using it, you can see it affects what actions do and perform.
Is there a way to ensure that it is always working of the current local date (dd) regardless if the UTC time has ticked over?
Have you tried using the addHours function instead of hard coding the hours in the formatdatetime function?
For the 6 am run I would try for the start time
formatDateTime(addHours(utcNow(), 2), 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.0000000Z')
And for the end time
formatDateTime(addHours(utcNow(), 12), 'yyyy-MM-ddTHH:mm:ss.0000000Z')
You could also use a check to see which occurence run it is an combine that with the addhours approach.
equals(utcNow('HH'), '20')
It looks like, you want to do your Start time and End time calculations based on your LOCAL date, but you are doing the calculation based on the UTC date and thus get the wrong day, if UTC ticked over.
I guess the solution would be, to do your Start and End time calculations based on the LOCAL time instead of utcNow() and then transform the resulting LOCAL Start and End times into UTC times to be used as Start Time and End Time parameters.
Something to the effect of:
convertFromUtc(utcNow(),'+10:00','yyyy-MM-dd"T"06:00:00.000000')
to get the local start time of the current day and then from there
convertToUtc(localStartTime,'+10:00')
to get the UTC start time with the proper day.
And the same again for the End Time.
Though the other solutions seem logical in their workings, they dont account for daylight savings and other date time issues.
For the solution I ended up hard coding some of the data and calculations:
Action: "Convert time zone"
Base time: trigger time
Format string: Universal sortable date/time pattern [u]
Source: +10:00
Destination: UTC
Action: "Compose"
Expression: formatDateTime( body('Convert_time_zone'), 'dd')
Then for the start time UTC:
Action: Initialise variable
Name: Output Start Date Time
Type: String
Value: yyyy-MM-[Output from Compose*]"T"22:00:00.0000000Z')
* in that [Output from Compose] I made it an expression so I could subtract 1 day, using: sub( int(outputs('Compose')), 1)
This way I could always get my local date (dd) then manually shift the date, and set it as well as the time for start time.
Then I would use that local date for the End date time, and manually set the time.
Not the cleanest solution, but it works 100% of the time regardless of daylight savings or any time conversions. It is however not transferrable to other users without them editing the info.
I have erroneously used Calendar.current.startOfDay(for: Date()) to populate a date attribute in Core Data. This means that when users cross different timezones I may have different dates unintentially stored in the date attribute field e.g.
Timezone 1 - 25th 23:00
Timezone 2 - 25th 22:00
Timezone 3 - 26th 05:00
I need to update the Calendar to use UTC Timezone but I need to also perform a migration so that the existing entries in Core Data read like this…
Result:
Timezone 1 - 26th 00:00
Timezone 2 - 26th 00:00
Timezone 3 - 26th 00:00
What are the steps to perform this migration. If I do a UTC startOfDay on it Timezone 1 would get 25th 00:00 instead of 26th 0:00 which is what it should be. Is it possible to accurately update existing entries?
Edit:
For some context I need a reliable way to get all the entries for the 26th for example. I used startOfDay to store the date as it meant I could query by it too and have the relevant entry returned (at any moment in time get the startOfDay and it will give me the entries for the whole day). For historical dates I can do the same - let's say the user has navigated back 2 days I can take startOfDay and subtract 2 days using Calendar.current.date(byAdding: .day, value: -2, to: date) and query for that.
So now the timezone breaks the above logic but is there some way to fix this? If I loop through the entries I can figure out the date it was supposed to be for and perhaps change the attribute to a string - e.g. 26-05-2021 or start to store day, month, year instead and query that.
From reading your answer Duncan I don't think I want to use UTC calendar as it would start to store the entry against the incorrect date from the users perspective dependent on their timezone e.g. user moves to next day and utc is still on previous.
Edit 2:
In a migration I will take the date that is stored and map it to new day, month and year properties storing those instead by getting them from Calendar.current.dateComponents([.day, .month, .year], from: date). Then instead of query by date I will query by day month and year of the Calendar.current where the user is. The side effect here is there is potential the user adds something for today (27th) changes timezone and sees 26th data but I don't think it can be avoided and the old data will then show as intended.
If you took the current time and used Calendar.current.startOfDay(for: Date()) to calculate midnight in the user's local time zone, you have a loss of information. You don't know what time of day the operation was performed. If you saved the time of day in the local time zone in another field, you could reconstruct a Date in UTC.
It isn't clear that what you did was wrong. The day, month, and year is only meaningful in a specific time zone. I am in the Washington DC metro area. We are in daylight savings time (EDT). It is currently 20:56 on the 26th of May. However, it's 1:56 AM on the 27th of May in London, 2:57 AM in Munich, and 3:57 AM in Tel Aviv. All at the exact same instant in time. In UTC it is 0:57 AM on the 27th of May.
Most people think of the calendar date in their local time zone. That is their frame of reference. If you ask me the date right now, I'll tell you it's the evening of the 26th of May. Unless I know you are in a different time zone, that's the "right" answer to me.
If I start out at midnight on a given day in my time zone, calling Calendar.current.startOfDay(for: Date()) each hour, I'll get midnight that day for all 24 hours in my local time zone. For the first 20 hours of the day, that would be the same result I would get if I created a Calendar in UTC and made the same call. However, at 20:00 EDT, I would start getting the next calendar day if I made the same query in UTC.
If you don't know what time of day you made the call to Calendar.current.startOfDay(for: Date()), there is no foolproof to figure out the day/month year in UTC at the instant you made the call. It depends on the time of day in the local timezone, and that timezone's offset from UTC.
Consider this code:
var calendarUTC = Calendar(identifier: .gregorian)
if let utcTimeZone = TimeZone(identifier: "UTC") {
print("Valid time zone")
calendarUTC.timeZone = utcTimeZone
}
print ("Start of day in UTC is \(calendarUTC.startOfDay(for: Date()))")
print ("Start of day in local time zone is \(Calendar.current.startOfDay(for: Date()))")
That outputs:
Start of day in UTC is 2021-05-27 00:00:00 +0000
Start of day in local time zone is 2021-05-26 04:00:00 +0000
That's because right now, which is 20:56 on 26 May in my time zone, it's 0:56 on 27 May in UTC. So if I ask the UTC calendar for the start of day for now (Date()) I get midnight on 27 May, in UTC.
If I ask the same question of my local calendar, I get midnight on 26 may in my time zone, which is 4:00 AM on 26 May in UTC.
If I ran the same code this morning at 8:00 AM in my time zone, I would have gotten the output:
Start of day in UTC is 2021-05-26 00:00:00 +0000
Start of day in local time zone is 2021-05-26 04:00:00 +0000
(Since at 8:00 AM on 26 May in EDT is also 26 May in UTC.)
It's tricky and not 100% reliable and only works if you know that all days were created using startOfDay. But first you need to decide what you want. Say one date was created at 10pm in the New York, and one at exactly the same moment in London, at 4am the next day. What day do you want to be stored?
If your date stored is 25th, 10pm, then you know it was created in a timezone where the day started at 10pm UTC. You are lucky, there are only two time zones that would have created this, one without DST, one with DST. So you know it happened in one of these two time zones, within 24 hours.
Unfortunately, time zones cover 26 hours. Fortunately, only some islands in the Pacific Ocean have same time and different dates (+13 and -11 hours). For these places, you cannot possibly know which date is correct, but very few people would be affected.
I am using the new CloudKit Dashboard to add to my public database. I can't seem to set a time that is PM anymore.
I am trying to enter a date 9/1/2017 8 pm and it always converts it to 8 AM.
I've tried:
09/01/2017 20:00:00
9/1/17 20:00:00
09/01/2017 08:00 PM
9/1/17 08:00 PM
09/01/2017 08:00 PM
Every single time when I hit save it changes the display time to:
9/1/2017 8:00:00
Which is 12 hours off. I thought maybe it was just a display issue but it's calculating in my app as 8am as well.
Is this a bug or am I doing something wrong? It used to work to use military time.
I was having the same issue with the new dashboard. I reached out to Apple Developer support yesterday, via email, and described what was happening.
We've only had our first email volley, so I haven't heard back about them closing (officially) the ticket, but I'm happy to report the date/time field appears to be fixed, I'm able to enter pm times without the value changing on save. Try it.
I am running mongodb on ubuntu server. The server time is
root# date
Thu Sep 13 21:15:58 BST 2012
But when I run the following command I get a different result
root# mongo
MongoDB shell version: 2.2.0
connecting to: test
> new Date()
ISODate("2012-09-13T20:15:58.670Z")
There is exactly one hour difference. When I update a documents updated_on field with php using MongoDate(), the value of the field is still 1 hour off.
[EDIT]
Actually I just checked my php error log and the time in the log file is 1 hour off as well
[13-Sep-2012 20:11:14 UTC] Log Message (Time should be 21:11:14)
Mongo tells you
2012-09-13T20:15:58.670Z
Z = Zulu time / Zero offset / UTC. You can also express the time in that TZ as 2012-09-13T20:15:58.670+00:00, as defined in the ISO8601 standard by the way.
BST is UTC+1. So, they are the same time but in different time zones.
You can resolve this issue by displaying the DateTime with ToLocalTime method.
MVC C# Example: #Model.StartDate.ToLocalTime()
This is due to the way MongoDB store datetime in BST format. So the daylight savings time or the time zone of the server will have an effect on the actual date time returned to the application. This simple code will be able to format as usual with ToString("dd MMMM yyyy hh:mm tt") or any other format based on your requirements.
Here you need to understand a concept in time setting in clocks called daylight saving time. In some countries around the world the clock is advanced by 1 or more hours to experience day light by one more hour. The difference between IST and GST is 5.30 hrs but the actual time difference is between New Delhi and London time is 6.30 hrs. See this article from 4GuysFromRolla for setting and using server time.
On windows change your timezone.
Controll Panel -> Date and Time -> Change on timezone -> (UTC) Coordinated universal time.
And then just change your time
What is the valid format for start_time and end_time while adding an event using graph api ...
i tried adding an event using unix time stamp .. however its not showing the same date when the event is published ..
when i give start_time as 1293802200 which is 31st Dec 2010 07:00 pm .. it shows as 31st Dec 5:30am on facebook ..
what is it that am doing wrong .. do i need to consider time zone issues as well ??
Regards
Abhishek Jain
According to http://developers.facebook.com/docs/reference/api/event/ it seems that you need to specify date in the Pacific time zone (PST).
Now, the timestamp value you provided is 31st Dec 2010 19:00 in India indeed which corresponds to same day, 5:30 in Pacific time.
In conclusion, convert your local time to Pacific time (PST) prior to uploading it to Facebook.