How to run Date Manipulation Functions in a different timezone? (advanced topic)

[mano]

Hi all,
I have users from all over the world and I want to run an API workflow on my browser for all my users in their respective timezones (API workflow with date manipulation).

Date Manipulation Functions rely heavily on timezone when it comes to Daylight Saving Time.
For example: If you add a week to [March 8th 2019 5pm America/New_York], you will get a different absolute time if it’s executed in a US timezone browser or if it’s executed in Mexico timezone browser (because DST started in the US on March 10th 2019 but only started in Mexico a few weeks later).

One possible way to do that, is to create daily recurring workflows for every user from their browser the moment they sign up and every time the daily workflows run, they check for a binary flag that tells them if they need to execute an operation or not.
That seems like an inefficient solution and if the user moves to a new country after they signed up, I have no way to update the timezone of the workflow to the new timezone.

Any ideas how to do that differently?

[reger-alexander]

@mano

Date Manipulation Functions rely on timezone.

That’s a wrong assumption.
Timezones are only different ways of displaying the same time. If you add a week for different timezones, you will still get the same result as absolute time. You can say timezone don’t matter at all for date manipulation. Bubble saves dates as UTC in the database, what you see on the frontend is just one of many ways (timezones) of displayging this date.

@mano

One possible way to do that, is to create daily recurring workflows for every user from their browser the moment they sign up and every time the daily workflows run, they check for a binary flag that tells them if they need to execute an operation or not.

You can’t run daily recurring workflows from the browser. This idea generally leads you nowhere.

What you probably want to do is capture the user’s current timezone when signing up - there’s multiple ways to do this you will find on this forum - and save it in your db. Then you display times on the frontend based on this timezone.

[mano]

@reger-alexander

Timezones are only different ways of displaying the same time.

That’s incorrect for Date Manipulation Functions.
Example:
Right now the time in Costa Rica and in Denver is the same time (for simplicity let’s say it’s 7am in both locations).
If you add 6 months to it from a browser in Costa Rica you will end up with 7am Costa Rica time in December.
If you add 6 months to it from a browser in Denver you will end up with 7am Denver time in December.
7am Costa Rica time in December is not the same time as 7am Denver time in December (since there is no DST in Costa Rica) - There is an hour difference between them in December

So if I need to run date manipulation functions through API workflow - it must be in the user’s timezone for it to be correct.
I’m looking for a way to run the above example (+6 months) from Denver and get 7am Costa Rica time in December and not 7am Denver time in December.

[eduKit]

Timezone for users

Hi, I am creating a platform that allows people to connect with other people at times they set. Is there a way for the “Host” to set their time and someone else in another timezone see the correct time matching their timezone. For example: Host (1pm Eastern Time) Not Host (12pm Central Time)

This shows the correct time based on the timezone. No need for a workflow.

[mano]

@eduKit

This shows the correct time based on the timezone. No need for a workflow.

I don’t want to show a time in a specific timezone. I need to run date manipulation functions not from the user’s browser but in an API workflow from a different browser - it’s way more complex.