I have a script that I want to run using a different timezone. My system is America/Chicago and I want users to run it from the xtrn section as America/New_York.

My original ideas was to create a bash wrapper script to set TZ and call jsexec but wont work since it requires various bbs and console functions to work properly.

Also, javascript doesn't appear to let you set an environment variable like you can with other languages such as perl.

Since I don't want to run my server or BBS in eastern time, does anyone have any suggestons on a workaround, other than to rewrtite it in perl? :)
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to All on Thu Oct 12 2023 01:29 pm

> I have a script that I want to run using a different timezone. My system is
> America/Chicago and I want users to run it from the xtrn section as
> America/New_York.
>
>
> My original ideas was to create a bash wrapper script to set TZ and call
> jsexec but wont work since it requires various bbs and console functions to
> work properly.
>
> Also, javascript doesn't appear to let you set an environment variable like
> you can with other languages such as perl.
>
> Since I don't want to run my server or BBS in eastern time, does anyone have
> any suggestons on a workaround, other than to rewrtite it in perl? :)

How does your script use the timezone currently? Could that usage be updated to
allow you to control the timezone used at run time (e.g. with a command-line option)?
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: Digital Man to nelgin on Thu Oct 12 2023 12:03:23

> How does your script use the timezone currently? Could that usage be updated
> to allow you to control the timezone used at run time (e.g. with a
> command-line option)?

The only way I can find to get it the script to use a different timezone is to set the TZ variable before it is executed, at least while testing with jsexec.

Since I will have to call it using ?script.js to make use of the bbs and console functions and properties, I'm not exactly sure how that would work.
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 2023 12:11 pm

> Re: Run JS with a different TZ
> By: Digital Man to nelgin on Thu Oct 12 2023 12:03:23
>
> > How does your script use the timezone currently? Could that usage be
> > updated to allow you to control the timezone used at run time (e.g. with
> > a command-line option)?
>
> The only way I can find to get it the script to use a different timezone is
> to set the TZ variable before it is executed, at least while testing with
> jsexec.
>
> Since I will have to call it using ?script.js to make use of the bbs and
> console functions and properties, I'm not exactly sure how that would work.

That didn't really answer my question: How is your script using the timezone currently?
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: Digital Man to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 2023 10:51:43

> That didn't really answer my question: How is your script using the timezone
> currently?

Oh, I'm reading a JSON file which has an ISO 8601 format date, then I'm passing that to something like d = new Date(isoDate); to create a date object so I can extract the time easier, I think I use strftime to get HH:MMa/p but, of course, the time I get is in central and not eastern. I can't just subtract an hour because that's not going to work during DST changes.

I hate to use something like moment-timezone for something like that, but it might be my only option unless you can think of something, I'm at a loss.
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 2023 01:47 pm

> Re: Run JS with a different TZ
> By: Digital Man to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 2023 10:51:43
>
> > That didn't really answer my question: How is your script using the
> > timezone currently?
>
> Oh, I'm reading a JSON file which has an ISO 8601 format date, then I'm
> passing that to something like d = new Date(isoDate); to create a date
> object so I can extract the time easier, I think I use strftime to get
> HH:MMa/p but, of course, the time I get is in central and not eastern. I
> can't just subtract an hour because that's not going to work during DST
> changes.
>
> I hate to use something like moment-timezone for something like that, but it
> might be my only option unless you can think of something, I'm at a loss.

Does the ISO 8601 formatted date include the UTC offset?
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: Digital Man to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 2023 12:11:13

> Does the ISO 8601 formatted date include the UTC offset?

This is an example of what I get, so the time is in UTC.

2023-10-13T23:30:00Z
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 2023 02:42 pm

> Re: Run JS with a different TZ
> By: Digital Man to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 2023 12:11:13
>
> > Does the ISO 8601 formatted date include the UTC offset?
>
> This is an example of what I get, so the time is in UTC.
>
> 2023-10-13T23:30:00Z

Okay, so if it's in UTC, it's in central *or* eastern US. It's UTC.

Example:
jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'

when run on my system (in PDT), produces:
Result (string): Fri Oct 13 2023 13:30:31 GMT-0700 (PDT)
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: Digital Man to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 2023 13:33:06

> Okay, so if it's in UTC, it's in central *or* eastern US. It's UTC.
>
> Example:
> jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'

jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'
Result (string): Fri Oct 13 2023 18:54:33 GMT-0500 (CDT)

Right, which gives a result in central time. I want the result in eastern time, as per:

TZ="America/New_York" jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'
Result (string): Fri Oct 13 2023 19:55:42 GMT-0400 (EDT)

However, there's no way to set TZ before executing the script from the xtrn section since I'm not calling jsexec.
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 2023 06:57 pm

> Re: Run JS with a different TZ
> By: Digital Man to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 2023 13:33:06
>
> > Okay, so if it's in UTC, it's in central *or* eastern US. It's UTC.
>
> > Example:
> > jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'
>
> jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'
> Result (string): Fri Oct 13 2023 18:54:33 GMT-0500 (CDT)
>
> Right, which gives a result in central time. I want the result in eastern
> time, as per:
>
> TZ="America/New_York" jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'
> Result (string): Fri Oct 13 2023 19:55:42 GMT-0400 (EDT)
>
> However, there's no way to set TZ before executing the script from the xtrn
> section since I'm not calling jsexec.

Right. And environment variables are shared among on threads (e.g. nodes) of the sbbs instance, so even if you could set the TZ environment variable, you'd be changing for all threads. Likely not what you want.

There's a whole new JS Date thing in the works for some future version of JavaScript, but that'll be aways away from being integrated with sbbs.

I think the easiest thing to do would be to adjust the UTC value based on the UTC offset for central time (yeah, it'll change with DST) and then use Date.toUTCString() to convert it to a string.
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: Digital Man to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 2023 21:06:05

> Right. And environment variables are shared among on threads (e.g. nodes) of
> the sbbs instance, so even if you could set the TZ environment variable,
> you'd be changing for all threads. Likely not what you want.

Definitely not what I want.

> There's a whole new JS Date thing in the works for some future version of
> JavaScript, but that'll be aways away from being integrated with sbbs.
>
> I think the easiest thing to do would be to adjust the UTC value based on
> the UTC offset for central time (yeah, it'll change with DST) and then use
> Date.toUTCString() to convert it to a string.

I'll probably stick with using the moment-timezone library then. I use it in my weather script so I'm not unfamiliar with it, but I was trying to see if there was a more native way to handle timezone conversions.

Thanks,
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 2023 18:57:42

> Re: Run JS with a different TZ
> By: Digital Man to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 2023 13:33:06
>
> > Okay, so if it's in UTC, it's in central *or* eastern US. It's UTC.
>
> > Example:
> > jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'
>
> jsexec '-r Date("2023-10-13T23:30:00Z")'
> Result (string): Fri Oct 13 2023 18:54:33 GMT-0500 (CDT)

if you know it's in UTC format then something like this should work (first result from google)

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/10087819/convert-date-to-another-timezone-in-javascript

##### code from the above url

function convertTZ(date, tzString) {
return new Date((typeof date === "string" ? new Date(date) : date).toLocaleString("en-US", {timeZone: tzString}));
}

// usage: Asia/Jakarta is GMT+7
convertTZ("2012/04/20 10:10:30 +0000", "Asia/Jakarta") // Tue Apr 20 2012 17:10:30 GMT+0700 (Western Indonesia Time)

// Resulting value is regular Date() object
const convertedDate = convertTZ("2012/04/20 10:10:30 +0000", "Asia/Jakarta")
convertedDate.getHours(); // 17

// Bonus: You can also put Date object to first arg
const date = new Date()
convertTZ(date, "Asia/Jakarta") // current date-time in jakarta.

charlie

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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: Charles Blackburn to nelgin on Sat Oct 14 2023 10:58:43

> function convertTZ(date, tzString) {
> return new Date((typeof date === "string" ? new Date(date) :
> date).toLocaleString("en-US", {timeZone: tzString}));
> }

You did actually try this and discovred it doesn't actually work, right?
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to Charles Blackburn on Sat Oct 14 2023 22:09:23

> Re: Run JS with a different TZ
> By: Charles Blackburn to nelgin on Sat Oct 14 2023 10:58:43
>
> > function convertTZ(date, tzString) {
> > return new Date((typeof date === "string" ? new Date(date) : date).toLocaleString("en-US", {timeZone: tzString}));
> > }
>
> You did actually try this and discovred it doesn't actually work, right?

can't say i did, i'm not a jS programmer, but was just throwing an idea out. but there should be a way to do it. In C/Python you can do it
in a similar way. if the string is in UTC you should be able to internally convert it to whatever TZ you want.

Charlie

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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to Charles Blackburn on Sat Oct 14 2023 10:09 pm

> Re: Run JS with a different TZ
> By: Charles Blackburn to nelgin on Sat Oct 14 2023 10:58:43
>
> > function convertTZ(date, tzString) {
> > return new Date((typeof date === "string" ? new Date(date) :
> > date).toLocaleString("en-US", {timeZone: tzString}));
> > }
>
> You did actually try this and discovred it doesn't actually work, right?

this looks like a job for Chad Jipiti
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: Charles Blackburn to nelgin on Sun Oct 15 2023 17:55:26

> can't say i did, i'm not a jS programmer, but was just throwing an idea out.
> but there should be a way to do it. In C/Python you can do it
> in a similar way. if the string is in UTC you should be able to internally
> convert it to whatever TZ you want.

Unforuntately, there isn't. That's why there's moment-timezone and Luxon.

Unfortunately Luxon is too modern to work with the sbbs version of js. moment-timezone is no longer developed or supported but at least it works.
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Re: Run JS with a different TZ
By: nelgin to Charles Blackburn on Mon Oct 16 2023 02:06:42

> Re: Run JS with a different TZ
> By: Charles Blackburn to nelgin on Sun Oct 15 2023 17:55:26
> > can't say i did, i'm not a jS programmer, but was just throwing an idea
> > out. but there should be a way to do it. In C/Python you can do it
<CUT>
> Unforuntately, there isn't. That's why there's moment-timezone and Luxon.
> Unfortunately Luxon is too modern to work with the sbbs version of js.
> moment-timezone is no longer developed or supported but at least it works.

well that sucks... maybe sbbs (unless there's a specific reason for it) should use the system-wide version maybe? I know it may be more work for the devs, but just my tuppence :D

as for the latter, maybe you should fork it and take it over lol

Charlie

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