Migrating dates in the same timezone: convert arguments to subfields?

Question

I have a migration that is successful except for the timezone.

$this->addFieldMapping('dest_date', 'source_date');

For some reason the above code causes a timezone conversion to happen between the source date and the destination timezone. The migration seems to assume the source is in UTC and needs converted to Chicago time, giving me a result that's six hours later than it should be. The source date is in fact from the same timezone, so I want to avoid converting it.

$this->addFieldMapping('dest_date', 'source_date')
  ->arguments(DateMigrateFieldHandler::arguments('America/Chicago', 'America/Chicago'));

The above code works perfectly, but when I run my migration I get this error:

The field mapping arguments() method is now deprecated - please use subfield notation instead.

However when I try to use subfield notation, I end up with the same problem again that I did when I had no arguments/subfields at all:

$this->addFieldMapping('dest_date', 'source_date');
$this->addFieldMapping('dest_date:timezone', 'source_date:timezone');

The above code doesn't seem to help at all, (edit: This is not surprising, as my field doesn't seem to have "timezone" as a subfield.) and the migration still seems to assume the source is in UTC and needs converted to Chicago time.

How do I convert my arguments to subfield notation without breaking them?

Answer 1

You can use it like:

$this->addFieldMapping('dest_date:timezone')
->defaultValue('America/Chicago');

Answer 2

I struggled with the same thing for hours before caving in and hacking the date module a teensy little bit :-)

My datefields are of the type "datetime" so I had to insert a timezone variable on line 158 of the date.migrate.inc file of the date module - like this:

        case 'datetime':
      // YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS.
      $timezone = 'Europe/Copenhagen'; #add this line
      $from = format_date($from, 'custom', 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $timezone);
      if ($to) {
        $to = format_date($to, 'custom', 'Y-m-d H:i:s', $timezone);
      }
      break;

You can just remove it after migration. I would love a better solution - I thought of extending the DateMigrateFieldHandler class, but that just gave me double dates :-/

Hope this helps