Creating a DateTime in a specific Time Zone in c#

user_42109 0
Viewed 253835

I'm trying to create a unit test to test the case for when the timezone changes on a machine because it has been incorrectly set and then corrected.

In the test I need to be able to create DateTime objects in a none local time zone to ensure that people running the test can do so successfully irrespective of where they are located.

From what I can see from the DateTime constructor I can set the TimeZone to be either the local timezone, the UTC timezone or not specified.

How do I create a DateTime with a specific timezone like PST?

timezone datetime .net-3.5 .net c#
9 Answers

Jon's answer talks about TimeZone, but I'd suggest using TimeZoneInfo instead.

Personally I like keeping things in UTC where possible (at least for the past; storing UTC for the future has potential issues), so I'd suggest a structure like this:

public struct DateTimeWithZone
{
    private readonly DateTime utcDateTime;
    private readonly TimeZoneInfo timeZone;

    public DateTimeWithZone(DateTime dateTime, TimeZoneInfo timeZone)
    {
        var dateTimeUnspec = DateTime.SpecifyKind(dateTime, DateTimeKind.Unspecified);
        utcDateTime = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTimeToUtc(dateTimeUnspec, timeZone); 
        this.timeZone = timeZone;
    }

    public DateTime UniversalTime { get { return utcDateTime; } }

    public TimeZoneInfo TimeZone { get { return timeZone; } }

    public DateTime LocalTime
    { 
        get 
        { 
            return TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(utcDateTime, timeZone); 
        }
    }        
}

You may wish to change the "TimeZone" names to "TimeZoneInfo" to make things clearer - I prefer the briefer names myself.

user_226560

Try TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(dateTime, sourceTimeZone, destinationTimeZone)

user_84194830

You'll have to create a custom object for that. Your custom object will contain two values:

Not sure if there already is a CLR-provided data type that has that, but at least the TimeZone component is already available.

Jon_Limjap_3720

Using TimeZones class makes it easy to create timezone specific date.

TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(DateTime.Now, TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById(TimeZones.Paris.Id));
user_20301260

For date/time with offset for a specific time zone (neither local, nor UTC) you can to use DateTimeOffset class:

  var time = TimeSpan.Parse("9:00");
  var est = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Eastern Standard Time");
  var nationalDateTime = new DateTimeOffset(DateTime.Today.Ticks + time.Ticks, est.BaseUtcOffset);
user_8163510
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