Timezone not working properly in Django

Question

I want to change timezone in Django, so I read documentation how to do it nad here's what I've got:

#settings.py
TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/Ljubljana'

#models.py   #date_time gets filled with "auto_now=True")
date_time = models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True)

UTC DST offset for given location (Europe/Ljubljana) is +2, while in my db I see timestamp of UTC. So what am I missing?

Or is this working as intended so it gets processed for each request separately (useful for people in different timezones)? But if this is the case, what's the use of setting TIME_ZONE = 'Europe/Ljubljana'?

user3053452 · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-25 15:32:12Z

5

From the documentation

When support for time zones is enabled, Django stores datetime information in UTC in the database, uses time-zone-aware datetime objects internally, and translates them to the end user’s time zone in templates and forms.

so the datetime in your DB will always be stored in UTC, but will be displayed using the correct TZ in templates and forms.

To get the date in correct TZ elsewhere, use astimezone():

>>> from myapp.models import Details
>>> import pytz
>>> d = Details.objects.get(pk=1)
>>> d.added
datetime.datetime(2016, 5, 28, 18, 59, 55, 841193, tzinfo=<UTC>)
>>> localdate = d.added.astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Ljubljana'))
>>> localdate
datetime.datetime(2016, 5, 28, 20, 59, 55, 841193, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'Europe/Ljubljana' CEST+2:00:00 DST>)

edited Jul 25, 2016 at 15:32

user3053452

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answered Jul 25, 2016 at 11:17

rafalmp

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6 Comments

user3053452 Over a year ago

Hmm, this appears to be a problem for me since, I want to change this timestamp into epoch - needed for highcharts. Any suggestions for workaround?

rafalmp Over a year ago

By setting the TIME_ZONE option in your DATABASE settings you can force Django to store datetimes in local time - but that will force you to use a database that doesn't support time zones (SQLite, MySQL, Oracle).

user3053452 Over a year ago

That's cool, currently I'm using MySQL, so I'll look into it!

rafalmp Over a year ago

Ah, forgot the easier and interoperable way - you can use the astimezone function to convert between TZs on the fly: date_time.astimezone(pytz.timezone('Europe/Ljubljana')), my bad.

user3053452 Over a year ago

So I should use this snippet of code in my script when calling from db?

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