Question

i really need to get Helsinki and Moscow current time using javascript but regardless of local timezone. I wonder how to do that? Maybe anyone has an example?

The format would be:

November 1, 2011
21:31:00

thank you.

Answer 1

The following function works when you know the offset ahead of time:

var MOSCOW_OFF = 4; // hours
var MONTHS = ["January", "February", "March", "April", "May", "June", "July", 
              "August", "September", "October", "November", "December"];

// desired format => November 1, 2011 21:31:00
function getLocalTime(offset) {
    var d = new Date();
    d.setTime((new Date().getTime()) + 
              (d.getTimezoneOffset() * 60 * 1000) + // local offset
              (1000 * 60 * 60 * offset)); // target offset
    return MONTHS[d.getMonth()] + " " + d.getDate() + ", " + 
            d.getFullYear() + " " + d.toTimeString().split(" ")[0];
}

getLocalTime(MOSCOW_OFF); // => "November 2, 2011 01:22:27"

The above will always work for Moscow, which no longer observes a Daylight Savings Time, but you’d need to be aware of what time of year it is to make an equivalently generic solution for Helsinki.