Rails 3: How to get today's date in specific timezone?

Ruby on-Rails Ruby on-Rails-3 Date Timezone

Ruby on-Rails Problem Overview

To get today's date I do:

Date.today    # => Fri, 20 May 2011

I would like to get today's date in a specific timezone, say 'Melbourne'.

I have the following setting in my application.rb:

config.time_zone = 'Melbourne'

and I set:

Time.zone = 'Melbourne'

in my application controller before each action.

However, it doesn't help (I guess because these settings affects only dates that are stored in the database).

How could I get today's date in 'Melbourne' ?

Ruby on-Rails Solutions

Solution 1 - Ruby on-Rails

Date objects don't necessarily have timezones, but Time objects do. You can try it as a Time, then convert back to a Date:

Time.now.to_date
# => Thu, 19 May 2011 
Time.now.in_time_zone('Melbourne').to_date
# => Fri, 20 May 2011

Solution 2 - Ruby on-Rails

You should be able to do this: Time.current. That would display the current time in Melbourne if that's what Time.zone is set to.

Solution 3 - Ruby on-Rails

`Date.current`

Date.current is probably the most clear and succinct way, and was added in Rails 3.

$ Date.current
#=> Sat, 14 Jul 2018

http://apidock.com/rails/v3.2.13/Date/current/class

Solution 4 - Ruby on-Rails

If you want to get "today" in some specified time zone without having to change Time.zone, I would do something like fl00r and Dylan Markow suggested:

Time.now.in_time_zone('Melbourne').to_date

or this:

Time.find_zone!('Melbourne').today

I wrote a little helper method Date.today_in_zone that makes getting a "today" Date for a time zone even easier:

 # Defaults to using Time.zone
 > Date.today_in_zone
=> Fri, 26 Oct 2012

 # Or specify a zone to use
 > Date.today_in_zone('Melbourne')
=> Sat, 27 Oct 2012

I think it reads a little nicer than Time.find_zone!('Melbourne').today...

To use it, just throw this in a file like 'lib/date_extensions.rb' and require 'date_extensions'.

class Date
  def self.today_in_zone(zone = ::Time.zone)
    ::Time.find_zone!(zone).today
  end
end

Solution 5 - Ruby on-Rails

It seems Time.zone.today also works.

Solution 6 - Ruby on-Rails

use DateTime class

DateTime.now.in_time_zone 'Melbourne'

Solution 7 - Ruby on-Rails

ruby-1.9.2-p0 :004 > Time.now
 => 2011-05-19 15:46:45 +0100 
ruby-1.9.2-p0 :006 > Time.now.in_time_zone('Melbourne')
 => Fri, 20 May 2011 00:47:00 EST +10:00 
ruby-1.9.2-p0 :007 > Time.now.in_time_zone('Melbourne').to_date
 => Fri, 20 May 2011

Solution 8 - Ruby on-Rails

For valid timezone names, checkout: http://api.rubyonrails.org/classes/ActiveSupport/TimeZone.html

Solution 9 - Ruby on-Rails

In Rails 3 you can simply do this by calling to_time_in_current_zone on a Date object.

Date.today.to_time_in_current_zone

Content Type	Original Author	Original Content on Stackoverflow
Question	Misha Moroshko	View Question on Stackoverflow
Solution 1 - Ruby on-Rails	Dylan Markow	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 2 - Ruby on-Rails	Ryan Bigg	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 3 - Ruby on-Rails	Josh	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 4 - Ruby on-Rails	Tyler Rick	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 5 - Ruby on-Rails	Slick23	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 6 - Ruby on-Rails	fl00r	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 7 - Ruby on-Rails	Max Williams	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 8 - Ruby on-Rails	mmattke	View Answer on Stackoverflow
Solution 9 - Ruby on-Rails	Slobodan Kovacevic	View Answer on Stackoverflow