How does one compare a date field with the non-UTC user/system time?

Question

Date field data won't always correspond to UTC. From a user perspective, these dates are assumed to be in the user's timezone. However, it is currently not possible to store dates in timezones other than UTC, at least until Add ability to select a timezone for datetime field gets in.

So when comparing these fields to the current time, the timezones won't match because the current time is in the local timezone and the field data is in UTC. We therefore need to adjust the current time to match the incorrect date field timezone (or vice versa).

What's a good solution for this?

Answer 1

I've developed a method to handle the conversion, thanks to help from another answer to another question. It requires a patch from Add DateTimePlus::getPhpDateTime() for situations that require a DateTimeInterface to work, however.

  /**
   * Fetches the current time adjusted for comparing to non-UTC date fields.
   *
   * Date field data won't always correspond to UTC. From a user perspective, 
   * these dates are assumed to be in the user's timezone.  However, it is
   * currently not possible to store dates in timezones other than UTC. So when
   * comparing these fields to the current time, the timezones won't match
   * because one is the local timezone and the other is in UTC.  We therefore
   * need to adjust the current time to match the incorrect date field timezone.
   *
   * @param Drupal\Core\Datetime\DrupalDateTime $date_time
   *   The date-time object fetched from a Date field (e.g. field_date->date).
   */
  protected static function getCurrentTimeForComparingToDateFieldIncorrectlyStoredInUtc(DrupalDateTime $date_time) {
    $current_time = new DrupalDateTime('now', DATETIME_STORAGE_TIMEZONE);
    $userTimezone = new \DateTimeZone(drupal_get_user_timezone());
    $timezone_offset = $userTimezone->getOffset($date_time->getPhpDateTime());
    $time_interval = \DateInterval::createFromDateString($timezone_offset . ' seconds');
    $current_time->add($time_interval);
    return $current_time;
  }