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Users of a website can be located in different time zones. Each one of them should be able to see the time data of a social website in hers or his respective local time. Additionally, we should store the time data in a uniform and independent form so that if the host location changes, all time data remains intact. To achieve this, one can store the time data as UTC time in the database but convert it to the users' local time when displaying it to them. The code snippets below show an example of how it can be done conveniently.
After we restore data from the database into a DataTable, we can check whether this DataTable has any fields in the DateTime format. If found and for each one of them, we can create an additional field in the DateTime format, call it according to some naming scheme, and add to the original table. In the code below, I add "Local" to the original name of the filed. Then, one can go through all DataRow's in the table and convert the value of each original field in the DateTime format into the local time of the authenticated user and store it into the newly created field respectively.
public static void AddLocalTimeColumns(DataTable table, string newNameFormat)
{
Dictionary<string, string> newNames = new Dictionary<string,string>();
foreach (DataColumn col in table.Columns)
{
if(col.DataType == typeof(DateTime))
{
string newName = string.Format(newNameFormat, col.ColumnName);
newNames.Add(col.ColumnName, newName);
}
}
if (newNames.Count == 0)
return;
foreach (KeyValuePair<string,string> pair in newNames)
{
table.Columns.Add(pair.Value, typeof(DateTime));
}
TimeZoneInfo userTZI = Time.UserTimeZoneInfo;
foreach (DataRow row in table.Rows)
{
foreach (KeyValuePair<string, string> pair in newNames)
{
if(row[pair.Key] != DBNull.Value)
{
DateTime utcDateTime = (DateTime)row[pair.Key];
DateTime localDateTime =
TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeFromUtc(utcDateTime, userTZI);
row[pair.Value] = localDateTime;
}
else
{
row[pair.Value] = DBNull.Value;
}
}
}
}
The authenticated user's local TimeZoneInfo can be stored in the user's profile and retrieved as it is shown in the code below.
public static TimeZoneInfo UserTimeZoneInfo
{
get
{
MembershipUser u = Membership.GetUser();
if (u != null)
return GetUserTimeZoneInfo((Guid)u.ProviderUserKey);
else
return TimeZoneInfo.Local;
}
}
public static TimeZoneInfo GetUserTimeZoneInfo(Guid UserID)
{
TimeZoneInfo tmi = null;
ProfileBase p = User.GetProfile(UserID);
string sTzi = (string)p.GetPropertyValue("Compfy.TimeZoneInfo");
if (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(sTzi))
tmi = TimeZoneInfo.FromSerializedString(sTzi);
else
tmi = TimeZoneInfo.Local;
return tmi;
}
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