Comment 5 for bug 918257

Hello Olivier,

what about that need to set Postgres server as UTC? Before setting it UTC,
it's not working properly here in Brazil (with the clients having the
proper America/Sao Paulo timezone).
I had to set it UTC and this is not the default configuration because by
default Postgres takes the timezone of the OS (which is not UTC here).
So was that expected by you? Wouldn't be better to force the UTC timezone
in the Python connection to Postgres?

Regards.

On Thu, Jan 26, 2012 at 8:11 AM, Olivier Dony (OpenERP) <
<email address hidden>> wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I don't think this is a bug, and to get matters straight, here is a
> description of how timezone support is designed to work in OpenERP 6.1
> (quite different from 6.0 and earlier):
>
> 1. Framework/Addons python code
> OpenERP 6.1 now uses exclusively UTC timestamps for server-side
> computations and storage. At startup the server forces the Python timezone
> to be UTC, so that any call to datetime-related modules will always use UTC
> by default. As Xavier said the server exchanges UTC timestamps with
> clients, and the timezone-specific rendering is only ever done on the
> client-side.
> The only case where the Timezone setting of the user preferences matters
> is for reports, because the rendering is performed server-side, so the user
> timezone needs to be applied. This is supported by formatLang(), a function
> available inside reports for rendering date time values.
>
> 2. Timezone-specific rendering in clients
> * GTK client will render the datetime values according to the "Timezone"
> configured in the user preferences. If no timezone is selected, it will
> display datetime values in the server-side timezone, i.e. UTC.
> * Due to Javascript's limited native timezone capabilities, the 6.1 web
> client cannot apply the "Timezone" that is set in the user preferences, and
> thus always renders value in the local timezone of the browser (which
> should usually be a sensible choice). The user timezone setting still
> matters for reports, as explained in 1.
>
> 3. Database storage
> Datetime values are also exclusively stored as "timestamp without
> timezone" in the database, so Postgres will never alter the values, and
> they will be handled as UTC all the time. We also don't use "select now()"
> at DB level for initializing new record values, that would require an
> unnecessary db query - datetime.datetime.now() or time.strftime() work well
> enough for us.
> In the few cases where we need to use now() (e.g. for WHERE clauses
> comparing with the current time) we now use "now() at time zone 'UTC'". The
> timezone of the DB connection is therefore irrelevant by design.
>
> These 3 rules seem to explain the behavior described in the bug
> description: the datetime values are stored as UTC and displayed in the web
> client using the local browser timezone, which is apparently not UTC - this
> is the expected behavior.
> You will usually get the expected behavior in all OpenERP clients if you
> properly set your local browser timezone (OS user timezone by default), and
> set the same timezone in the User preferences (for reports and GTK).
>
> This is the intended design, there might of course be some left-over
> cases where these rules are broken, but there should not be that many
> (e.g. missing `formatLang` calls in reports, etc.). These would be bugs
> and we are fixing them as we find them
>
> We'll also add a tooltip on the Timezone user preference field to
> explain this, and include the above explanation in the release notes and
> developer documentation.
>
> Please reopen this bug (or a new one) if you notice a case that does not
> seem to match the above rules.
>
> Thanks,
>
> ** Changed in: openerp-web
> Status: Incomplete => Invalid
>
> --
> You received this bug notification because you are a member of OpenERP
> Drivers, which is subscribed to OpenERP Web.
> https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/918257
>
> Title:
> openerp-web always uses the same (wrong) time zone
>
> Status in OpenERP Web:
> Invalid
>
> Bug description:
> openobject-server/trunk revno 3970
> openerp-web/trunk revno 2009
>
> Steps:
>
> - Install project on a new db
> - Create a new task setting a start date (keeping empty the user's time
> zone, as by default)
>
> The visualized time is different from the one saved in the database.
>
> Moreover, if you change the user's time zone, GTK works well and shows
> the correct time, WEB always shows the same wrong time.
>
> To manage notifications about this bug go to:
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>