datetime - How to handle timezones in CFML?

Question

How to handle timezones in CFML? So far all apps I've wrote just use the default timezone of the CF server and/or SQL server.

What do you guys usually do? Do you store all dates in GMT with GetTimezineInfo() and then DateAdd(), and translate all time to the correct timezone based on logged in user's preference?

Or do you guys use any java methods?

Answer 1

I was looking into the issue some time ago and found Paul Hasting's blog and Coldfusion/Java examples very helpful:

Don't forget to check out his TZCFC test bed

How to store dates will probably depend on your business logic. In a project I did where we had to implement human resource scheduling across timezones we stored dates/times in UTC and used datediff in the database to check for conflicts.

EDIT:

• Handling timezones in storage
• Is there a central repository for time zone information