• Run JS with a different TZ

    From nelgin@VERT/EOTLBBS to All on Thu Oct 12 13:29:08 2023
    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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  • From Digital Man@VERT to nelgin on Thu Oct 12 12:03:23 2023
    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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  • From nelgin@VERT/EOTLBBS to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 12:11:31 2023
    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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  • From Digital Man@VERT to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 10:51:43 2023
    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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  • From nelgin@VERT/EOTLBBS to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 13:47:36 2023
    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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  • From Digital Man@VERT to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 12:11:13 2023
    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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  • From nelgin@VERT/EOTLBBS to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 14:42:52 2023
    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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  • From Digital Man@VERT to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 13:33:06 2023
    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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  • From nelgin@VERT/EOTLBBS to Digital Man on Fri Oct 13 18:57:42 2023
    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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  • From Digital Man@VERT to nelgin on Fri Oct 13 21:06:05 2023
    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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  • From nelgin@VERT/EOTLBBS to Digital Man on Sat Oct 14 01:39:34 2023
    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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  • From Charles Blackburn@VERT/THEFBO to nelgin on Sat Oct 14 10:58:43 2023
    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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  • From nelgin@VERT/EOTLBBS to Charles Blackburn on Sat Oct 14 22:09:23 2023
    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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  • From nelgin@VERT/EOTLBBS to Charles Blackburn on Mon Oct 16 02:06:42 2023
    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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  • From Charles Blackburn@VERT/THEFBO to nelgin on Mon Oct 16 13:09:06 2023
    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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