I'm developing a web application (PHP server side ) in which users from all over the world can access.
Suppose now a user from New York (UTC - 4 ) login to my website (Server is located in Italy (UTC +2 )). When he is logged into it, the server will set a timestamp in that user SQL table with UTC +2.
Suppose now that this user want to get his last time access: he will get a wrong date (6 hours offset due to the different location of the server ).
How can I prevent this unacceptable behavior ? Should I store an UTC offset each time user logs in ?
It is highly recommended that you store all your timestamps for all your user in a single timezone, which by convention would be UTC.
It will make it much easier to manage the database table, for example sorting users by timestamp.
You can either change the timezone to UTC of your server, of the PHP module or locally in your code.
Related
I have an app that can order an item, we have 3 timezone users (UTC+7, UTC+8, UTC+9)
every store is open at 07:00 until 17:00, I need to check if the user request an order but outside working hours, what I have done is sending order time from user app to back-end then I compare the time, but there is a bug, we still can change the time on user app within store's open time and they still can order, what is the best way to handle request from multiple timezone
Note: the back-end server is using Node.js
In frontend app you need to send the shop id and keep that configuration on the backend. You can normalize dates to be set in UTC which should make things easier.
After you send request you know what shop is sending it and in configuration you should get the working hours in UTC. Then you check actual time in UTC and you can decide whether making order is allowed or not.
It is important to store the dates with timezone offset using correct format (ISO 8601).
Another option is to send the dates using iso 8601 (with timezone offset) and on backend you need to normalize it to UTC and check whether requests are allowed or not.
I write a notification based web app. I have to set notification times in the client side, send to the server, save to mysql database, continuously check for notifications, when the time is ready, send alert to the client. Simple as pie. Problem is, i'm pretty noob with timezones stuff. My server is in GMT-4, I am currently GMT+2, but in a few month i'll be in GMT +1 because of winter time. I can't get my head around the solution.
So far, i use moment.js on the server side and javascript built in Date object on the client side and i save times in unix timestamp.
My question in short: How to keep track on timezones and stuff, if i don't want any problem if i move my server from gmt-4 to lets say gmt-5 and don't want any problem with seasonal timesone change.
Thanks to spend time on my problem!
Best regards.
The issue of storing timestamps is simple: Store them in UTC.
As for displaying them in client again, Take the device (client) timezone and convert utc to device time zone.
I am running a Meteor application and have an API on my server that is going out and getting RSS feeds and timestamps them using new Date(). I have no way of setting the time on the server, so it defaults to GMT.
Is there a way to use new Date() with an offset so it saves the date as Central Standard Time?
The reason for this need is because when I display the posts by day on my site, it is completely off because the timestamps are GMT.
Thanks in advance.
on a standard web page, how can you get JavaScript to accurately detect when a user is visiting given the user may be on eastern, central, western or any other time zone while browsing to the web page?
in other words, how can I use JavaScript to detect the current date time of a users page load is between two specific date/times while not knowing what time zone the user's browser is actually set to?
I want to display a message between Friday March 4th 2014 noon until Saturday March 5th 7AM EASTERN time to users who brose my site. How can I ensure this logic not knowing what the browser's time zone is set to locally on their machines?
Is there a universal way in JavaScript of date time comparisons like SQL server has using UTC?
I am using kendo datepicker. I want user to pick a date. I will save it in the database.
here's the problem.
when user in india picks "1/1/2011". the value I get back from kendo datepicker is
LOG: investmentStartDate: Sat Jan 1 00:00:00 UTC+0530 2011
after I save it to the database, the date changed to "2010-12-31". I think that happens because of the timezhone, both my application server and database server are eastern time.
my users can come from anywhere, japan, china, india or london. is there a way i can convert this time to the actual date regardless which timezone they live in.
Give us a little more info about your server side. I had quite some experience and trouble with timezones and kendo the other day. I managed to overcome it, so maybe I can help.
The general best practice I followed and most people like is to keep your server data in UTC timezone format, and then add the timezone difference on the client side.
The way it works for me is I pull in a DateTime from my server which is in UTC via a REST service. I have an event that fires after the datasource reads the time from the server on the clientside, the event logic finds out the browsers timezone and adds the difference to the UTC time. The user can then pick the time which is shown in his timezone. When he clicks the save button, before sending the changed data to the server, it once again gets converted the UTC timezone and is being sent to the server in that format.