Regex to replace timezone offset

Question

I have a string representing date/time with timezone. I want to change the timezone part to UTC that is +00:00

Please help me to write regext to match +05:30, -03:30 etc and replace it with +00:00

I tried with "2012-04-17T15:40+05:30".gsub!(/\+\d\d:\d\d/, '+00:00') which gives me expected results but I don't know how to match -5:30

I would appreciate if someone helps me to write regex which work with both 2012-04-17T15:40+05:30 and 2012-04-17T15:40-05:30

Thanks, Amit Patel

score 7 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:56

7

"2012-04-17T15:40+05:30".gsub!(/[+-]\d\d:\d\d/, '+00:00')

will replace both positive and negative offsets. But why?

answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:56

Tim Pietzcker

My application receives date/time in user's timezone. At some points in the application I want to consider the time as if it is in UTC. So before giving `params[:date]` I replace it's TZ part in `before_filter` so rest is taken care by AR – Amit Patel Apr 17 '12 at 19:58

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:56

1

How about simple:

str = "2012-04-17T15:40+05:30"
str.sub!(/.{6}\z/, '+00:00') # => "2012-04-17T15:40+00:00"

answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:56

jdoe

It also worked but above two looks more cleaner. Thanks for sharing, @jdoe. – Amit Patel Apr 17 '12 at 20:03
`/.{6}\z/` -- is something may be cleaner? :) – jdoe Apr 17 '12 at 20:05
I just payed attention in mu answer to your exclamation mark `!` at the end of the sub/gsub. With this mark the function replaces the content of the string it applied to. So it's more logical to use it not for literal but for variable. I guess you got the idea. – jdoe Apr 18 '12 at 05:15
I have used literal so it is more readable here but I have variable which is being manipulated. – Amit Patel Apr 18 '12 at 07:10

score 1 · Answer 3 · answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:57

1

Change your regex to

/(\+|\-)\d\d:\d\d/

answered Apr 17 '12 at 19:57

David Gorsline

But I'm also curious about what you are trying to accomplish. It looks to me that you are discarding the time zone information about the local time. – David Gorsline Apr 17 '12 at 20:00
Yes, I just commented in below answer. – Amit Patel Apr 17 '12 at 20:02

3 Answers3