How to save dates in local timezone to db with rails3?

Question

I have Rails3 application with model user and field expires_at created like this:

t.column :expires_at, :timestamp

In my database (postgresql) it has type:

timestamp without timezone

The problem is when I call:

@user.expires_at = Time.now
@user.save

it is saved into database with UTC timezone (my local time is UTC + 1:00, Warsaw) but I don't want that. I just want to have time with my local timezone saved into the database (2011-03-30 01:29:01.766709, not 2011-03-29 23:29:01.766709)

Can I achieve this using rails3?

Beware! If you'll have users across more than one timezone, this'll get messy fast. I prefer to keep all my times as UTC in the DB, and only convert them to non-UTC for display on the client side (you can convert a time from UTC to the timezone set in a user's OS with a little bit of JavaScript). Good luck! — Xavier Holt
– Xavier Holt, Commented Mar 30, 2011 at 0:04
what about database queries when i take input from user?? ActiveRecord convers it to UTC automatically? — Adrian Serafin
– Adrian Serafin, Commented Mar 30, 2011 at 0:10
That's a good question, but I doubt it - it would have to know the user's time zone to be able to do the correct conversion. If you want to store user-supplied dates as UTC, you'll probably have to convert them client-side (urgh). I've used date.js for my client-side conversions, but I've only done display - I've never accepted dates as input... — Xavier Holt
– Xavier Holt, Commented Mar 30, 2011 at 0:22

Kick Buttowski · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-28 20:20:28Z

9

For saving time in local timezone to database this has to be set in application.rb

 config.active_record.default_timezone = :local

edited Nov 28, 2018 at 20:20

Kick Buttowski

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answered Mar 30, 2011 at 0:12

Adrian Serafin

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1 Comment

Trip Over a year ago

This doesn't work if you are using Resque. Not sure how to deal with resque.

Teddy Widom · Accepted Answer · 2014-04-28 04:42:16Z

2

If you only want to use local times on certain columns, rather than as a global setting, then the Rails documentation tells us this:

# If your attributes are time zone aware and you desire to skip time zone conversion to the current Time#zone when reading certain attributes then you can do following:

class Topic < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.skip_time_zone_conversion_for_attributes = [:written_on]
end

(This also skips time zone conversion on writing, not just reading). And you can pass in an array of symbols for multiple attributes.

I am not sure which versions of Rails this was introduced in, though.

answered Apr 28, 2014 at 4:42

Teddy Widom

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2 Comments

deprecated Over a year ago

It doesn't seem to skip timezone on writing (i.e. it still converts to UTC), how do you check it? When I query via psql, I see all the values converted to UTC, instead of in the original timezone.

Turgs Over a year ago

you also need to set config.active_record.time_zone_aware_attributes = false to prevent conversion to UTC when saving to the database

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