Question

I’m trying to create a unit test to test the case for when the timezone changes on a machine because it has been incorrectly set and then corrected.

In the test I need to be able to create DateTime objects in a none local time zone to ensure that people running the test can do so successfully irrespective of where they are located.

From what I can see from the DateTime constructor I can set the TimeZone to be either the local timezone, the UTC timezone or not specified.

How do I create a DateTime with a specific timezone like PST?

Answer 1

Jon’s answer talks about TimeZone, but I’d suggest using TimeZoneInfo instead.

Personally I like keeping things in UTC where possible (at least for the past; storing UTC for the future has potential issues), so I’d suggest a structure like this:

public struct DateTimeWithZone {     private readonly DateTime utcDateTime;     private readonly TimeZoneInfo timeZone;      public DateTimeWithZone(DateTime dateTime, TimeZoneInfo timeZone)     {         var dateTimeUnspec = DateTime.SpecifyKind(dateTime, DateTimeKind.Unspecified);         utcDateTime = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(dateTimeUnspec, timeZone);          this.timeZone = timeZone;     }      public DateTime UniversalTime { get { return utcDateTime; } }      public TimeZoneInfo TimeZone { get { return timeZone; } }      public DateTime LocalTime     {          get          {              return TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(utcDateTime, timeZone);          }     }         } 

You may wish to change the ‘TimeZone’ names to ‘TimeZoneInfo’ to make things clearer – I prefer the briefer names myself.