Rehan's answer was SO great! In my use case I ran into an issue where the time zone conversion also changed the day of the week the task would be scheduled for.
Perhaps there is an easier way but here is what I did.
The timezone conversion we needed would only advance the weekday.
If your use case requires the weekday to be retreated then you will need to edit this, but it should be an easy fix.
def local(time, est_weekday = nil)
days = [:sunday, :monday, :tuesday, :wednesday, :thursday, :friday, :saturday, :sunday]
local_time = Time.parse(time)
utc_time = TZInfo::Timezone.get('America/New_York').local_to_utc(local_time)
utc_time_formatted = utc_time.strftime("%I:%M %p")
if est_weekday && days.include?(est_weekday.downcase.to_sym)
#extract intended wday for ruby datetime and assign
weekday_index = days.index(est_weekday.downcase.to_sym)
#get placeholder wday from desired EST day/time
temp_est_weekday_index = local_time.wday
#get placeholder wday from adjusted UTC day/time
temp_utc_weekday_index = utc_time.wday
#has the conversion to UTC advanced the wday?
weekday_advances = temp_utc_weekday_index != temp_est_weekday_index
#adjust wday index if timezone conversion has advanced weekday
weekday_index += 1 if weekday_advances
weekday = days[weekday_index]
return {time: utc_time_formatted, day: weekday || nil }
else
return utc_time_formatted
end
end