A Time-like class that can represent a time in any time zone. Necessary because standard Ruby
Time instances are limited to UTC and the system‘s
ENV[‘TZ’] zone.
You shouldn‘t ever need to create a TimeWithZone instance directly via new — instead, Rails provides the methods local,
parse, at and now on TimeZone instances, and in_time_zone on Time and DateTime instances, for a more user-friendly
syntax. Examples:
Time.zone = 'Eastern Time (US & Canada)' # => 'Eastern Time (US & Canada)'
Time.zone.local(2007, 2, 10, 15, 30, 45) # => Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:30:45 EST -05:00
Time.zone.parse('2007-02-01 15:30:45') # => Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:30:45 EST -05:00
Time.zone.at(1170361845) # => Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:30:45 EST -05:00
Time.zone.now # => Sun, 18 May 2008 13:07:55 EDT -04:00
Time.utc(2007, 2, 10, 20, 30, 45).in_time_zone # => Sat, 10 Feb 2007 15:30:45 EST -05:00
See TimeZone and ActiveSupport::CoreExtensions::Time::Zones
for further documentation for these methods.
TimeWithZone instances implement the same
API as Ruby Time instances, so that Time and TimeWithZone instances are interchangable.
Examples:
t = Time.zone.now # => Sun, 18 May 2008 13:27:25 EDT -04:00
t.hour # => 13
t.dst? # => true
t.utc_offset # => -14400
t.zone # => "EDT"
t.to_s(:rfc822) # => "Sun, 18 May 2008 13:27:25 -0400"
t + 1.day # => Mon, 19 May 2008 13:27:25 EDT -04:00
t.beginning_of_year # => Tue, 01 Jan 2008 00:00:00 EST -05:00
t > Time.utc(1999) # => true
t.is_a?(Time) # => true
t.is_a?(ActiveSupport::TimeWithZone) # => true