timezone 0.5.0-dev-2

Time zone database and time zone aware DateTime.

TimeZone

This package provides time zone database and time zone aware DateTime object.

Current Time Zone database version: 2015b

Initialization

TimeZone objects require time zone data, so the first step is to load one of our time zone databases.

We are providing two different APIs for browsers and standalone environments.

Initialization for browser environment

Import package:timezone/browser.dart library and run async function Future initializeTimeZone([String path]).

import 'package:timezone/browser.dart';

initializeTimeZone().then((_) {
  final detroit = getLocation('America/Detroit');
  final now = new TZDateTime.now(detroit);
});

Initialization for standalone environment

Import package:timezone/standalone.dart library and run async function Future initializeTimeZone([String path]).

import 'package:timezone/standalone.dart';

initializeTimeZone().then((_) {
  final detroit = getLocation('America/Detroit');
  final now = new TZDateTime.now(detroit);
});

Local Location

By default, when library is initialized, local location will be UTC.

To overwrite local location you can use setLocalLocation(Location location) function.

initializeTimeZone().then((_) {
  final detroit = getLocation('America/Detroit');
  setLocalLocation(detroit);
});

API

Location

Each location in the database represents a national region where all clocks keeping local time have agreed since 1970. Locations are identified by continent or ocean and then by the name of the location, which is typically the largest city within the region. For example, America/New_York represents most of the US eastern time zone; America/Phoenix represents most of Arizona, which uses mountain time without daylight saving time (DST); America/Detroit represents most of Michigan, which uses eastern time but with different DST rules in 1975; and other entries represent smaller regions like Starke County, Indiana, which switched from central to eastern time in 1991 and switched back in 2006.

The tz database

Get location by Olsen timezone ID

final detroit = getLocation('America/Detroit');

We don't provide any functions to get locations by timezone abbreviations because of the ambiguities.

Alphabetic time zone abbreviations should not be used as unique identifiers for UTC offsets as they are ambiguous in practice. For example, "EST" denotes 5 hours behind UTC in English-speaking North America, but it denotes 10 or 11 hours ahead of UTC in Australia; and French-speaking North Americans prefer "HNE" to "EST".

The tz database

TimeZone

TimeZone object represents time zone and contains offset, dst flag, and name in the abbreviated form.

final timeInUtc = new DateTime.utc(1995, 1, 1);
final timeZone = detroit.timeZone(timeInUtc.millisecondsSinceEpoch);

TimeZone aware DateTime

TZDateTime object implements standard DateTime interface and contains information about location and time zone.

final date = new TZDateTime(detroit, 2014, 11, 17);

Converting DateTimes between Time Zones

To convert between time zones, just create a new TZDateTime object using from constructor and pass Location and DateTime to the constructor.

final localTime = new DateTime(2010, 1, 1);
final detroitTime = new TZDateTime.from(time, detroit);

This constructor supports any objects that implements DateTime interface, so you can pass native DateTime object or ours TZDateTime.

Time Zone databases

We are using IANA Time Zone Database to build our databases.

We are currently building three different database variants:

• default (doesn't contain deprecated and historical zones with some exceptions like US/Eastern). 308kb/72kb gzip
• all (contains all data from the IANA Time Zone Database). 370kb/100kb gzip
• 2010-2020 (default database that contains historical data from 2010 until 2020). 71kb/16kb gzip

Updating Time Zone databases

Script for updating Time Zone database, it will automatically download the IANA Time Zone Database and compile into our native format.

$ pub run tool/get -s 2014h

Argument -s is for specifying source version.