“Incorrect” Timezone on Heroku

This is just a friendly reminder that Time.now on Heroku will give you server time, ie: PDT/PST, and not the local time for your app.

Since usually you want time calculations to be done with the correct zone for your app, just make sure to include ‘zone’ in your call for Time.now, like so:

Time.zone.now

I have the following in my config:

config/application.rb

config.time_zone = 'Mountain Time (US & Canada)'

Here’s the difference for me in Heroku’s console:

Time.now #=> 2011-08-20 18:53:06 -0700
Time.zone.now #=> Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:53:08 MDT -06:00

So, remember, always use Time.zone.now instead of Time.now.

Happy time travel!

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