If you are using Rails 2.0 or earlier, you might want to take a look at the TzinfoTimezone plugin (http://agilewebdevelopment.com/plugins/tzinfo_timezone). This replaces the built in Rails TimeZone class with one that uses TZinfo. With this plugin installed, you’ll still get Rails’ standard list of timezones with the GMT offset when you use time_zone_options_for_select or time_zone_select. However, the TimeZone object has additional utc_to_local, local_to_utc and tzinfo methods to allow you to access the TZInfo functionality.

Edge Rails (2.1) now bundles a cut-down version of TZInfo and includes the functionality of TzinfoTimezone. See http://mad.ly/2008/04/09/rails-21-time-zone-support-an-overview/ for more information.

Regards,

Phil

Is there anyway I can display time in “US-Central” or “US-Eastern” format instead of “ America-New york” or “ Europe-Athens” format at the top of drop down list using Tzinfo .

I am presently using “time_zone_select” which displays US zones on top of drop down in “ America-New york” format .

TZInfo::Timezone, :default => “America/Chicago” )%>

I can display US zones in “ (GMT - 06:00 ) CentralTime (US & Canada)” by using standard rails TimeZone ( ) . But , I will have problem when I use “utc_to_local” method .

Thanks,
Madhu Nallamani

Basic use of TZInfo involves code like:

tz = TZInfo::Timezone.get("America/New_York")
local_time = tz.utc_to_local(my_time_in_utc)
utc_time = tz.local_to_utc(my_local_time)

Scott’s how-to describes how you can add an attribute to an existing User model that returns the timezone. This is done using the Rails composed_of method. In the example, the field time_zone in the users table contains the timezone identifier for the user (e.g. America/New_York). composed_of exposes a TZInfo::Timezone object as an attribute called tz. You can then call utc_to_local, local_to_utc, etc on this timezone to convert the time.

I desperately need to add this functionality to a little web app that is all done, minus timezone offset support!

Totally stoked that this TZ Library exists, thanks for your hard work!

class USTimezone
  def initialize(timezone)
    @timezone = timezone
  end

  def name
    @timezone.name
  end

  def to_s
    @timezone.to_s
  end

  def self.all
    TZInfo::Country.get('US').zones.sort.map {|tz| USTimezone.new(tz)}
  end
end

You can then use this class with:

  <%= time_zone_select 'user', 'timezone', nil, :model => USTimezone %>

What would be your approach on displaying just the U.S. timezones when using time_zone_select ?

The code below returns all counties:

TZInfo::Timezone %>

Um….. I got nothin, hope all is well in English Land, say hi to the other guys from me!

-
Australian Ash