Question

User model has time_zone, which stores say “Pacific Time (US & Canada)”.

Scenario:
1. Current_user lives in Japan timezone
2. Current_user is viewing profile of John who lives in “Pacific Time (US & Canada)”
3. On John’s profile, I need to show local time at “Pacific Time (US & Canada)” as 10:01 am

What I did?
ActiveSupport::TimeZone.new(@user.time_zone).now returns something like 2011-09-21 10:01:56 UTC

Questions:
1. How to do I convert this to 10:01 am?
2. Why is it UTC?

Please help

Answer 1

To set TimeZone, you need to use

Time.zone= @user.time_zone

You may want to set this in :before_filter in application.rb

OTOH, you can use use_zone method with a block

Time.use_zone(@user.time_zone) do
  #.... This code will run as if you were in @user.time_zone
end