datetime to string with time zone

Question

I have a DateTime stored in universal time (UTC) of value 2010-01-01 01:01:01.

I would like to display it in EST in this format 2010-01-01 04:01:01GMT-04:00, however the 'K' formatter for timezone doesn't work in ToString

Answer 1

I think you are looking for the TimeZoneInfo class (see http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.timezoneinfo_members.aspx). It has many static methods to convert dates between time zones.

Answer 2

Something like this works. You could probably clean it up a bit more:

string newDate = string.Format("{0:yyyy-MM-dd hh:mm:ss} GMT {1}", dt.ToLocalTime(), dt.ToLocalTime().ToString("%K"));

Answer 3

Use the "zzz" format specifier to get the UTC offset. For example:

        var dt = new DateTime(2010, 1, 1, 1, 1, 1, DateTimeKind.Utc);
        string s = dt.ToLocalTime().ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss \"GMT\"zzz");
        Console.WriteLine(s);

Output: 2009-12-31 19:01:01 GMT-06:00

I'm in the CDT timezone. Make sure the DateTime is unambiguously DateTimeKind.Utc. Avoid "GMT", it is ambiguous for daylight saving.