Fragile software design: storing datetime with TZ=America/Chicago

My Scouting Tools
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Bug Fixes

  • Fixed an issue with time zone affecting units that use Daylight Savings Time. Note: IA Calendar saves the time in Central Time. If the event is at 7pm it will save it based upon the units relation to the Central time zone. If you are out of the unit’s time zone when you view the event, it will show the time of the event in your unit’s timezone first and add a second line with the time in your device’s (local) time zone. And if you are in your unit’s time zone it won’t show a different local time. All events in Scoutbook will be reflected properly in IA and all IA events will reflect correctly in SB.

Storing datetime’s with the TZ is just asking for problems down the road.

Please store datetime as UTC. Allow users to show as “local to unit”, “local to browser”, or UTC.

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In the W3C’s Time Zone guidelines for working with time and time zones in applications and document formats they recommend using UTC for time values wherever possible, Working with Time Zones

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I have to agree. Then you could have a checkbox that says “my unit observes daylight saving time” and it just works.

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You wouldn’t need the checkbox if the application detected and used the browser’s timezone.

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I thought there were some weird Indiana counties that are hard to know?

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And your browser may not be in the same place as your unit

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