>- see footer for list info -<
OK, as the token Aussie here, your not going to be able to work out the
local time for a user in Australia unless you know the State that user is
in, cos some States in Australia don't observe DST, and some start DST
earlier than others. So, if was just a straight pick "English (UK) / English
(AUS)" I don't see how it could work ...

New South Wales (Sydney), Victoria (Melbourne), Queensland (Brisbane),
Australian Capital Territory (Canberra), Tasmania (Hobart) are all UTC/GMT
+10 hours
South Australia (Adelaide), Northern Territory (Darwin) are UTC/GMT +9:30
hours
Western Australia (Perth) is UTC/GMT +8 hours

New South Wales, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory, South Australia all
observe DST, which starts on the LAST Sunday in October (2005)
Tasmania observes DST, but it starts on the FIRST Sunday in October (for
2005 anyway. I think they changed it to this only this year though)
All these States end DST on the same date, the last Sunday in March (2006)

Queensland, Western Australia and the Northern Territory do not observe
daylight saving

... clear as mud !? Do you collect address information from your users ? If
you have servers in AUS, then you could calculate the time you need for that
State your server is in, and work out the time to display/save for the user
based on what State they are in ? There are a few web services out there so
you don't have to calculate things yourself, or remember dates for DSTs,
like
http://www.quantumsoftware.com.au/ProductsServices/WorldTimeWebService.aspx,
but you still have to know what State the user is in. HTH !



-----Original Message-----
From: Aidan Whitehall [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] 
Sent: 22 July 2005 16:47
To: [email protected]
Subject: [CF-Dev] International datetime Q

>- see footer for list info -<
We're internationalising / localising a web-app we host for our UK and AUS
users.

The idea is that we want to accept data from a user and, knowing their
locale, store the data along with the UTC time they submitted it. Then,
subsequently be able to fish it back out the db and say "you submitted this
data at xx:xx" and show them the datetime adjusted back into their timezone.
That way, we know all datetimes in the db are UTC.

I was making the assumption that we're after something that can return the
UTC offset and current DST settings given a particular locale.
getTimeZoneInfo() looked like it might do the trick, but it only returns the
time zone offset info for the computer on which the function is called
(presumably the server).

However, I'm now wondering if knowing the locale is actually enough... for
the UK, it's straightforward as there's only one timezone, but AUS has
multiple timezones, each with their own (weird Johnny-foreigner) TZ offset
and DST rules. So, I'm beginning to think we should ask the user for their
geographical location instead of just "pick from this list -> English (UK) /
English (Australian)".

Any pointers on the "correct" way to tackle this would be very much
appreciated.

Talk about can of worms...


--
Aidan Whitehall
Macromedia ColdFusion Developer


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