Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

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Bogey
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by Bogey »

There is something wrong with this MOD... I'm in Eudora, Kansas, but I get my timezone to be in Europe/London
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MartectX
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by MartectX »

Bogey wrote:There is something wrong with this MOD... I'm in Eudora, Kansas, but I get my timezone to be in Europe/London
Did you change your timezone in the UCP? Did you use AutoMOD to install Automatic Daylight Savings Time?
Bogey
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by Bogey »

MartectX wrote:Did you change your timezone in the UCP?
I thought the purpose of this MOD was to automatically get the timezone. (I don't know if that is possible in PHP).
MartectX wrote:Did you use AutoMOD to install Automatic Daylight Savings Time?
Yes, I used AutoMOD and everything was a success... I also read the DIY and ran convert_timezones.php file.
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MartectX
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by MartectX »

Bogey wrote:
MartectX wrote:Did you change your timezone in the UCP?
I thought the purpose of this MOD was to automatically get the timezone. (I don't know if that is possible in PHP).
No, the purpose of this MOD is to automatically determine the correct DST settings for each timezone (which has to be selected in the UCP / ACP first!).
Bogey
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by Bogey »

Oh, I see. Thanks for clarification.
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stephenju
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by stephenju »

Hi.

Great mod. Save me tons of headaches. Thanks.

I do have a problem using date() string "g:i a T" where the "T" is for timezone name. My timezone is set to "America/New_York" but the display says "GMT" instead of "EST". The time itself is correct local time but the timezone name is always "GMT".

Anyway to make it show what the user's timezone name is? Thanks.
Bonky
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by Bonky »

So I downloaded this mod because on the mod page it said ~5 minutes for completion. Then I open up the zip and it says it's a 20-minute "intermediate" mod. Sux man. :o :cry:

I can't do SQL changes or anything like that. Just some basic file copying and come text revisions. Is there any mod out there that changes all users' daylight savings settings to the board's DST settings? And then when the Admin changes those settings (ie. from OFF to ON when DST comes around), it changes all the users' settings as well?

All my users are in the US, where the DST settings are essentially all alike. Or close enough. I don't need anything fancier than that, especially since 5-minute mods end up taking me an hour or two to do anyhow. :(
wolfman24
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by wolfman24 »

This mod takes less than 5 minutes if you use automod, by the way. It also works very well so you should consider installing it.
Bonky
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by Bonky »

ARGGg... :evil:

Well I installed it and so far it works fine but I really wish I hadn't :( It's quite unusable for US users.

For example, how are people in Seattle (Pacific Time Zone) supposed to know that they should select Los Angeles as their city? The two are 1000 miles apart. Same goes for users in Miami selecting New York. They'll figure it out but I can already tell I'm going to get a lot of emails asking WTF is that all about?

Is there absolutely no way I can either add more cities or change "America/New_York" to "America/Eastern_Standard_Time" or some such? All of my users are from the US.

EDIT: Or can I remove some cities? I mean, San Francisco isn't there but Fort Wayne is? Very strange.

If neither of these changes can be made, could somebody tell me what the original value of the SQL item I changed was so I can make everything the way it was before installing this mod? The one that was changed to:

ALTER TABLE phpbb_users CHANGE user_timezone user_timezone VARCHAR( 255 ) NOT NULL;

Thx very much.

EDIT:

Ok I think I understand now. The time zone cities were created by someone else entirely. It's not the Modder's fault, but whoever compiled the time-zone cities did an awful job. At least for the US. Just awful.

For example, like I said above, there's only one city, Los Angeles, for the entire Pacific coast? Yet there's both New York and Detroit which have the same time zone and are much closer together? And there's no Miami which is at the extreme opposite end of the East Coast? What sense does any of that make?

Anyway, I guess I'll keep the mod because the thought of undoing everything makes my eyes bleed, but if you're in the US you should really consider something different.
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MartectX
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by MartectX »

stephenju wrote:I do have a problem using date() string "g:i a T" where the "T" is for timezone name. My timezone is set to "America/New_York" but the display says "GMT" instead of "EST". The time itself is correct local time but the timezone name is always "GMT".

Anyway to make it show what the user's timezone name is? Thanks.
Use this for time zone name display and automatic translation:

Code: Select all

(AUTOMATIC_DST_ISDST) ? sprintf($user->lang['AUTOMATIC_DST_DISPLAY'], strtr(AUTOMATIC_DST_TIMEZONE, $user->lang['automatic_dst_timezones']), $user->lang['tz']['dst']) : sprintf($user->lang['AUTOMATIC_DST_DISPLAY'], strtr(AUTOMATIC_DST_TIMEZONE, $user->lang['automatic_dst_timezones']), '')
Bonky wrote:So I downloaded this mod because on the mod page it said ~5 minutes for completion. Then I open up the zip and it says it's a 20-minute "intermediate" mod. Sux man. :o :cry:
Unfortunately I can't change the MOD description on the download page. :?
Bonky wrote:All my users are in the US, where the DST settings are essentially all alike. Or close enough. I don't need anything fancier than that, especially since 5-minute mods end up taking me an hour or two to do anyhow. :(
Yeah, one might think that, but it is not that simple. There are multiple timezones and multiple DST laws for them for the U.S. alone! That's why I implemented this modification in the first place!

To quote myself:
MartectX wrote:This MOD is about Automatic Daylight Savings Time and thanks to non-unanimous geopolitics you just cannot determine DST from the "UTC + X" time zone! For example in UTC-7 alone there are US states which sport DST (Colorado) and some which do not (Arizona). In the city-based system the user may choose America/Denver and America/Phoenix respectively and be done with it. If I'd opt for the UTC dropdown box I'd have to re-introduce the UCP option of "Enable DST: YES / NO" which to eliminate was this MOD's whole point.
Bonky wrote:Ok I think I understand now. The time zone cities were created by someone else entirely. It's not the Modder's fault, but whoever compiled the time-zone cities did an awful job. At least for the US. Just awful.

For example, like I said above, there's only one city, Los Angeles, for the entire Pacific coast? Yet there's both New York and Detroit which have the same time zone and are much closer together? And there's no Miami which is at the extreme opposite end of the East Coast? What sense does any of that make?

Anyway, I guess I'll keep the mod because the thought of undoing everything makes my eyes bleed, but if you're in the US you should really consider something different.
As I have already explained above, those are all different timezones with different DST settings and thus the multitude of options is warranted. As for the cities they picked and who picked them - I agree that some appear quite arcane... :|
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stephenju
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by stephenju »

OK. Now I understand how time works in phpBB. All times are assumed GMT but with offset added before converting to date time strings using gmdate(). That's why 'T' & 'e' always return GMT.
troublegum44
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by troublegum44 »

I have tested this MOD with phpBB 3.0.7 and can confirm that it works as expected :)
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Martin Day
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by Martin Day »

I have found what I believe is a conflict between the "[Beta] phpBB Calendar 0.1.0 (alightner)" Mod and "Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)" Mod.

These are the symptoms:
For a Calendar event posted before the spring change in daylight saving time, but scheduled to occur after it, the time that is set by the person posting is displayed as starting and finishing one hour later than they intended.

My guess is that once (in my case) we are into British Summer Time the future events will automatically be corrected but in the meantime the event times are confusing all my members.

Have you any suggestions as to how to fix this conflict, please?
Martin
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MartectX
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by MartectX »

Martin Day wrote:For a Calendar event posted before the spring change in daylight saving time, but scheduled to occur after it, the time that is set by the person posting is displayed as starting and finishing one hour later than they intended.

My guess is that once (in my case) we are into British Summer Time the future events will automatically be corrected but in the meantime the event times are confusing all my members.

Have you any suggestions as to how to fix this conflict, please?
I'd have to look at the code in question but my guess is that indeed, the calendar does not take into consideration the Daylight Savings Time settings of each date when editing. When this behaviour is coupled with the Auto DST modification it is still correct from the viewpoint of the PHP script but counter-intuitive for us humans.

I hope that I can get back into coding next week but there's some stuff to be done with Milestone Congratulations and SkyLine skins first before I can delve deeper into this problem here.
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Martin Day
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Re: Automatic Daylight Savings Time (DST)

Post by Martin Day »

MartectX, Thanks for your thoughts.

I thought you would like to know that I also raised the issue with Alightner, author of the "[Beta] phpBB Calendar 0.1.0 (alightner)" Mod who pointed me in the direction of a potential solution that you had come up with previously here: http://www.phpbb.com/community/viewtopi ... 0#p8599285

To my eye it look like this might solve my problem but I won't have a chance to try it out for a few days, so I wanted to acknowledge it and thank you for the help in the meantime.
Martin
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