Question

I want to save an event in a default time zone i.e. Whenever an user submits an event it will get convert to the default time zone and will be save in the database.

Whenever user requests for an event, the system will find that users time zone and convert the date (from the default format) in that user time zone and display it to the user.

I’m having difficult time where to start from i saw many notes and documents but couldn’t figure it out the complete process of doing it.

I saw this code but couldn’t understand how to use it :

before_filter :set_time_zone

def set_time_zone
  Time.zone = current_user.time_zone if current_user
end

Answer 1

The default time zone in the database is UTC.

There are 2 ways you can do it:

1. Allow their user to store their time zone in the database
2. Grab their time zone from their IP

For option 1, Rails has very good support for time zones. The #all method will allow you to create a dropdown for them to choose from. Then save it in the database with the user record.

Option 2 is less work for the user, but is also less accurate. There are a few services that convert IP’s to Time Zones.

To display the time in a given time zone, use Time#in_time_zone or you can set the Time.zone as above and it should display properly.