How to display user's time zone information nicely in javascript

Question

In a web page, using Javascript, I want to display the user's local timezone information nicely. For instance, if a user from California (Pacific time) browses the web page, I want to display something like this:

Pacific Standard Time

If the long time zone name is not available then at least I want to display 'PST' in this case.

Is there a standard way to do this in Javascript? I've looked around, but couldn't find a satisfactory solution. The Date object's toLocaleString method comes close, but it's not quite what I want.

Unfortunately, any of the below methods that pull out part of the response from .toString() will give you inconsistent results, because the implementations are slightly different in some browsers, especially older ones. — Matt Johnson-Pint
– Matt Johnson-Pint, Commented Mar 5, 2014 at 1:22

Venkat Reddy · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-04 23:35:58Z

2

How about this one ? you can add some conditions around it but the basic is

var now = new Date();
var tz = now.toString().split("GMT")[1];
tz.substr(7,tz.length -8)

OR

var now = new Date(); 
var zone = /\(.*\)/.exec(now.toString())[0];

edited Mar 4, 2014 at 23:35

answered Mar 4, 2014 at 23:30

Venkat Reddy

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Harvey A. Ramer · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-05 02:35:55Z

1

What you are probably looking for is a simple code snippet. However, working with date formatting is an area that is greatly helped by using a good tool, and Moment.js is in my opinion, the best: http://momentjs.com/

Or, you can do this

var myDate = new Date(); 
var timeZone = /\(.*\)/.exec(myDate.toString())[1];

edited Mar 5, 2014 at 2:35

answered Mar 4, 2014 at 23:23

Harvey A. Ramer

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2 Comments

Jake Over a year ago

Moment.js is a great tool. Actually I had taken a look at its document too, but I couldn't find what I wanted. @Harvey, can you be more specific about Moment.js?

Harvey A. Ramer Over a year ago

Jake, it's not the best tool to do exactly what you requested. That's why I amended my answer with a simple way to print the time zone. It's a tool that's designed to format dates, compare them, and to convert dates from one time zone to another.

StackSlave · Accepted Answer · 2014-03-04 23:30:40Z

0

I think you're looking fore something like:

console.log(new Date().toString());

For an easy to read list of Date Object methods see: http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_obj_date.asp .

answered Mar 4, 2014 at 23:30

StackSlave

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