Storing a UTC time. Displaying it in local time

Question

Im writing a mvc4 application that will be used globally. Part of the application is recording when a transaction was added or modified.

So I am saving the transaction datetime as UTC. from the clientside whats my best way to display the date as they are expecting?

Is this a javascript function I should be using or should I be doing something within the view?

Please define "as they are expecting". – RobG Sep 17 '12 at 03:14 — RobG, Sep 17 '12 at 03:14

score 0 · Answer 1 · edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

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It depends on your preference. If you have user time zone on the server side, stored in the database, the simplest way is to use DateTimeOffset.

Example: Creating a DateTime in a specific Time Zone in c# fx 3.5.

Alternatively, use JavaScript getTimezoneOffset() Method, set cookie and read it on server. Also you can use many client libs, especially if you use client templating.

edited May 23 '17 at 11:55

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answered Sep 16 '12 at 11:14

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score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Sep 16 '12 at 12:23

Internally, javascript date objects store the time as a number of milliseconds since an epoch UTC (1970-01-01T00:00:00Z). The simplest way to transfer time is using that number, so:

// 2012-09-16T10:30:00.000Z
var ms = 1347791400000;

// Create a new date object using UTC milliseconds
var d = new Date(ms);

alert(d); // Shows local time equivalent, e.g. 2012-09-16T20:30:00GMT+1000

Alternatively, you can pass a UTC timestamp, split it into its components and convert it to a date object using Date.UTC. Note that months are zero based so one must be subtracted from the calendar month number.

To get the UTC millisecond value for a local time, use Date.prototype.getTime. For the example above:

alert(d.getTime()); // 1347791400000

Storing a UTC time. Displaying it in local time

2 Answers2