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Ting Chung
Ting Chung

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Dealing with time zones in rails

I really had a lot of fun doing this rails portfolio project. My idea for my rails project was for a prayer gathering. A prayer gathering should have many attendees and should also have prayers to take to the prayer gathering. I also have a host that acts like an administrator and only a host can perform CRUD actions on the gathering. Any user can also create a prayer for the prayer gathering. Here are my relationships tables below

Prayer gathering associations

Prayer gathering associations

I had 2 areas that were challenging. One was to properly add an address to my gathering form. In this form, I had to create an address object with model. And looking back on it, this was a simple solution for a complex problem. So this is the code that I started with in regard to the address:

    def gathering_params
        params.require(:gathering).permit(:name, :meeting_date, :phone_number, :host_id, :url, :timezone, :address => [:address_1, :address_2, :city, :state, :zipcode])
    end
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And this was my form below:

<%= form_for @gathering do |f| %>
<%= f.label :name %><br>
<%= f.text_field :name %><br><br>
<%= f.label :meeting_date %><br>
<%= f.datetime_select :meeting_date, default: Time.now.localtime, ampm: true %><br><br>
<%= f.label :timezone %><br>
<%= f.time_zone_select :timezone, ActiveSupport::TimeZone.us_zones %><br><br>
<%= f.label :phone_number %><br>
<%= f.text_field :phone_number %><br><br>
<%= f.hidden_field :host_id, :value => @host.id %>
<%= f.label :url, "URL" %><br>
<%= f.text_field :url %><br><br>
<%= f.fields_for :address, @address do |a| %>

    <%= a.label :address_1 %><br>
    <%= a.text_field :address_1 %><br><br>
    <%= a.label :address_2 %><br>
    <%= a.text_field :address_2 %><br><br>
    <%= a.label :city %><br>
    <%= a.text_field :city %><br><br>
    <%= a.label :state %><br>
    <%= a.select :state, options_for_select(us_states) %><br><br>
    <%= a.label :zipcode %><br>
    <%= a.text_field :zipcode %><br><br>

<% end %>

    <%= f.submit :class => "button" %><br><br>
<% end %>
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I originally thought that as long as I can accept everything in the hash called address, rails should generate an object called address; however, I quickly realized that rails did not permit the address field. After googling and playing around with the address object several rounds, I realized that I needed address_attributes instead of just address. Also, because my gathering object only had one address, the build method is different. It should be the following:

self.build_address(attributes)
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After doing this and changing my strong params to the one shown below, I was finally able to move on.

    def gathering_params
        params.require(:gathering).permit(:name, :meeting_date, :phone_number, :host_id, :url, :timezone, :address_attributes => [:address_1, :address_2, :city, :state, :zipcode])
    end
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So for my second major issue, it had to do with time validations. I had a datetime object created for the gathering meeting time. At first, my form looked like this:

<%= f.label :meeting_date %><br>
<%= f.datetime_select :meeting_date, default: Time.now.localtime, ampm: true %>
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When I hit the create button, I realized that the datetime created was for UTC time and not the local time. After pulling my hair out, I realized that there was no way around this issue. I had 2 choices. One was to create a meeting time in UTC (which nobody understands other than software engineers), or I had to set a time zone. I realized that resolving this issue would be for my edification, so I decided to painfully add a column to my gatherings table called “timezone” and redo my form to look like this:

<%= f.label :meeting_date %><br>
<%= f.datetime_select :meeting_date, default: Time.now.localtime, ampm: true %><br><br>
<%= f.label :timezone %><br>
<%= f.time_zone_select :timezone, ActiveSupport::TimeZone.us_zones %><br><br>
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Having a time_zone_select would help the user properly identify their timezone and allow me to adjust the timezone offset. My set_in_timezone method looked like this:

    def set_in_timezone(time, zone)
        Time.use_zone(zone) { time.to_datetime.change(offset: Time.zone.now.strftime("%z")) }
    end
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Me gatherings controller looked like this:

    def create

        @host = current_user
        @gathering = @host.gatherings.build(gathering_params)
                @gathering.set_in_timezone(@gathering.meeting_date, @gathering.timezone)
                @gathering.save
    end    
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There was no problem doing this until I ran into my update action in my controller. Here was the code.

    def update
        @host = current_user
        @gathering = Gathering.find(params[:id])
        #@gathering.meeting_date = set_in_timezone(@gathering.meeting_date, gathering_params[:timezone])

        if @gathering.update(gathering_params) && @gathering.address.save
            redirect_to gathering_path(@gathering)
        else
            flash[:error] = @gathering.errors.full_messages.to_sentence + @gathering.address.errors.full_messages.to_sentence
            render :edit
        end
        #binding.pry
        #@gathering.address.update(gathering_update_address_params)
    end
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The problem here is that updating and validating happen in the @gathering.update method altogether! I found out that I can use the before_validation method. So in order to do this properly, I needed to reset the proper time before the validation. My code looked like the following:

    before_validation do
        self.meeting_date = set_in_timezone(self.meeting_date, self.timezone)
    end
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After finally making that change, I was good to go. Also during validation, I checked to see that the meeting_date created was not in the past.This validation looked like the following:

    validate    :future_event

    def future_event
        if meeting_date != nil

            errors.add(:meeting_date, "cannot be in the past.") if self.meeting_date.in_time_zone < Time.zone.now
        end

    end 
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After all these were implemented, I could finally move on. Happy coding!

Top comments (2)

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bizzibody profile image
Ian bradbury • Edited

Here's a tip to help make working with date/time values super simple.

[a] Always store date/time values in UTC
[b] Use the browser to convert UTC to local and back

The beauty of this solution is that dates will always be accurate. There is no requirement to take day light savings in to account. There is no need to know the time zone of the user. There are no complex time maths to complete not the server.

(And please - always always always run your server to UTC time)

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ting682 profile image
Ting Chung

Thanks for the feedback, Ian! At the time in my curriculum, I was not familiar with how to use the front-end to get the browser's time. I believe a lot of things can be refactored given that. I also learned that I can simply fetch the UTC time from the back end and do all my manipulation on the front end.