Timezone and Database config

Questions / Help
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1

Hello, I am trying to use Brazil Timezone but I don’t know how to config it as default on my phoenix project.
I tried to use Tzdata but I am not sure if it is what I need.
I am new to this area and I would like to know if there is any solution to set the entire application to UTC-3 which is the standard in Brazil or if I must configure it each time a value is inserted and retrieved in the database.

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2

Elixir’s ecosystem works with UTC datetimes or naive datetimes, so you have two options:

  • use naive datetimes with your server time set to GMT-3. In this way, datetimes will not have a timezone attached, and they will just use the server’s time.

  • work with UTC datetimes and convert them to correct timezone when appropriate.

It’s kinda tricky, what worked for me was playing a bit with timezone conversions, timex and iso8601 datetimes from user inputs.

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This really depends on your server and your DB configuration. If they are in sync and are in the Brazil timezone then you can just use the :naive_datime or :naive_datetime_usec Ecto types and everything should be in your local timezone.

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4

I did a recent presentation on Time Zones that you might find helpful:

http://mikezornek.com/posts/2020/3/working-with-time-zones-in-an-elixir-phoenix-app/

Good luck!

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