How to get the right timezone(server timezone) from the UTC date format

Question

As follow up of the below link.

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/3215508/how-to-format-this-date-type-2010-06-24t000000z-to-sun-24-06-10-7-15-p-m-cdt

I'm converting the utc date format to simple date format. 2010-06-24T00:00:00Z to sun,24/06/10 7.15 p.m (CDT) (converted time)

But is there a way to identify the valid timezone, as the above conversion always detects the time zone based on client m/c. Or is it that we can't detect the valid time zone from UTC??

Appreciate the quick response.

Answer 1

UTC has no time zone, it is "universal" because it is always the same no matter where you are. Time zone information has to be determined by the observer.

Answer 2

You didn't define what you mean by "valid timezone" -- do you mean local timezone? (UTC is a perfectly valid timezone, after all--or at least it is if you're in the Western European Time Zone and it's not British Summer Time…)

If you have a UTC date and you want to turn it into a date in the local timezone, that's straightforward:

function UTCtoLocal(inDate) {
    // inDate can be null, a string or an object
    // if it's an object, it can be a date or event

    var localDate = new Date();
    var utcDate = new Date().toUTCString();

    if (inDate) {
        if (typeof inDate == "string") {
            utcDate = inDate;
        }
        else { 
            if (inDate.getDay) { // is it really a date?
                utcDate = inDate.toString();
            }
        }
    }

    utcDate = utcDate.substr(0, utcDate.length-3);
    localDate.setTime(Date.parse(utcDate));
    return localDate;
}