[TYPO3-core] RFC: Bug #1697: Datetime input fields and timezone shift bug

[Ernesto Baschny [cron IT]]

Hi,

commited to trunk: rev. 2752

Cheers,
Ernesto

Ernesto Baschny [cron IT] wrote: on 30.04.2007 12:52:
> Hi, hope you all came home well from T3DD. It was nice to see you again!
> 
> This is SVN patch request.
> 
> Branch: trunk and TYPO3-4_1
> 
> 
> Problem:
> Editing date, datetime, time and timesec fields in BE when you have an
> offset between your clients timezone and the server timezone leads to
> wrong information being stored.
> 
> Related to this: The click-checkbox to set the current date did not work
> on fields with eval year, time and timesec. This is also fixed with the
> patch.
> 
> 
> How to reproduce:
> 1) Install the extension user_datetest which I uploaded to the bug
> report: http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=1697. It will add a new table
> "Date Test" where you can test all possible date-time field types that
> we currently support in TCA.
> 
> 2) Be sure that the server is on a timezone different from your client
> (e.g. server in CEST, set your client to Auckland (GMT+12) or some other
> bizarre timezone). You will have to at least restart your browser when
> you change the OS timezone (at least on Windows). Your mileage will wary
> depending on the clients way of handling timezones, so you might even
> need to reboot for a TZ-change to effect your browser.
> 
> 3) Create a new record "Date Test"
> 
> 4) Force-Reloading of the alt_doc frame (CTRL-Reload on IE, SHIFT-Reload
> on FF) after each change, because there is included Javascript that will
> be changed by the patch.
> 
> 5) Use the click-default buttons to see how they work (or not).
> 
> 6) Store the record.
> 
> 7) Watch in the Web>List view (Extended View) so that you see all fields
> for in the list-table and compare the entered dates and especially times
> with the displayed dates.
> 
> 
> Solution:
> The date on server is currently stored as a unixtime based on the server
> local timezone. This requires no conversion of timezones if, server,
> backend, frontend user are in the same timezone. To keep existing
> extensions working we also have make sure that server + frontend output
> is not being changed, which means we have to keep saving unixtime based
> on server-timezone in the database.
> 
> The solution from the patch uses the UTC date as a timestamp transport
> standard between the server and the backend-client and vice-versa. The
> server will print out HTML and JS with a UTC-unixtime for the date in
> the database (class.t3lib_tceforms.php). The client will work with that
> UTC time and return UTC-time (all javascript based,
> jsfunc.evalfield.js). The server will then translate that back to server
> timezone and store it to the database (class.t3lib_tcemain.php).
> 
> This patch is based on the work of Mario Matzulla (author of "the
> calendar") and reviewed, fixed and enhanced by both of us in a "night
> session" during the developer days.
> 
> 
> Reference:
> http://bugs.typo3.org/view.php?id=1697
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> Ernesto
>