Is the DateFormat read only?

[Graham Samuel]

I am as confused as anyone else as to what you are trying to do, but just in case, this little function seems to work for me to get the ’standard’ UTC date format which I have to use in my app to put time stamps into GPX files. It apparently produces the correct time zone. Doubtless it could be more elegantly coded. 

Hope it helps - who knows?

Graham

function fUTCTime
   local t1,t2,t3
   -- this gets the current time and puts it into UTC format, i.e YYYY-MM-DDThh:mm:ssTZD
   put word 5 to 6 of the internet date into t3 -- we are interested in the time and time zone
   put the long time into t1
   convert t1 to dateItems -- format is yyyy,m,d,h,m,s,day no.
   put (item 1 of t1) & "-" & f2digits(item 2 of t1) & "-" & f2digits(item 3 of t1) &"T" & word 1 of t3 into t2
   put word 2 of t3 into t1 -- the time zone indication
   get char 1 of t1 — the code for 0 (zero) is Z, apparently
   if it <> "+" and it <> "-“ then
      put "Z" after t2
   else
      put t1 after t2
   end if
   return t2
end fUTCTime

function f2digits theNum
-- add a leading zero. We don't check if there are more than two digits
   if number of chars of theNum = 1 then
      return ("0" & theNum)
   else
      return theNum
   end if
end f2digits


> On 7 Nov 2020, at 01:34, Alex Tweedly via use-livecode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com> wrote:
> 
> I don't think it "strips" the TZ info - it simply ignores it. I think the key phrase is in the dictionary as :
> 
>> *Note:* The *convert* command assumes all dates / times are in local
 time except for 'the seconds', which is taken to be universal time.
>> 
> So it assume syou date is in local time (regardless of the +0300), and therefore your example returns +0000 for you (I assume you're in the UK, or equivalent,  now). It does the same for me, and returns the date with "+0000".
> 
> However, the same code run on my LC server (wherever on-rev is these days), changes the +0300 to -0500 - i.e. it's taken as local time where the server is.
> 
> 
> I assume you should be able to do something with the TimeZone library - but I'm struggling to figure that out.
> 
>>    local tNow
>>    put the seconds into tNow
>>    put FromUniversalTime(tNow,"US/Central") into tt
>>    put tNow && tt
>>    put FromUniversalTime(tNow,"US/Alaska") into tt
>>    put CR & tt after msg
> gives me
> 
> 1604709030 1604709030
> 
> 1604709030
> 
> so I don't have a clue  what it was trying to do !?!
> 
> Alex.
> 
> On 06/11/2020 21:28, David Bovill via use-livecode wrote:
>> Why does:
>> 
>> get "Fri, 06 Nov 2020 10:57:37 +0300"
>> convert it to internet date
>> put it
>> 
>> — give
>> "Fri, 06 Nov 2020 10:57:37 +0000"
>> 
>> Just seems to strip the timezone info?
>> On 30 Oct 2020, 21:29 +0000, How to use LiveCode <use-livecode at lists.runrev.com>, wrote:
>>> ToUniversalTime
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