[RFC] Local time handling by Javascript

[EXreaction]

Reasons:
Using PHP requires that users update their timezone setting at least once if they want the correct time displayed (assuming it would no longer be required for users to change DST twice a year with 3.1)
Using PHP means that guests are never shown local time

Since the sentiment is that we do not want to get rid of handling PHP side because of users who have javascript disabled, there is an easy way to support both. All that needs to be done is to modify user::format_date to output a slightly different timestamp string, something like:

Code: Select all

'<span class="localtime">' . (generated time) . '<span class="gmtime" style="display: none;">' . $gmepoch . '</span></span>'

Then, with a bit of jQuery, we grab the gmtime, format it to local time, then replace the generated time with the local time.

This would only require three edits in two files, the user class and the header, and would not cause any problems for styles or mods that are not updated (it would just show the time exactly as it does now).

I've setup a quick test of it here:
http://exreaction.lithiumstudios.org/phpBB3_time/

The only thing that would be left to do is to build a conversion table from the php format string to a javascript format string so that the date is displayed in the format the user selected.

[igorw]

Please use data- attributes for something like this:

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'<span class="localtime" data-timestamp="' . $gmepoch . '">' . (generated time) . '</span>'

jQuery:

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$('.localtime').each(function() {
    $(this).text(someMagic($(this).attr('data-timestamp')));
});

[EXreaction]

I've never seen data- attributes used before. o.0

[Erik Frèrejean]

I might be mistaken but aren't the data attributes introduced in the HTML 5 spec?

[igorw]

I might be mistaken but aren't the data attributes introduced in the HTML 5 spec?

Yes, that is correct. But this is phpBB 3.2 so it might be feasible, plus it's already supported by all browsers (afaik). I guess we'll have to see if we want to go down that route.

[Erik Frèrejean]

I missed that this was in the 3.2 forum, I would swear that it was in 3.1 . Yes for 3.2 this probably is feasible.

[ToonArmy]

I might be mistaken but aren't the data attributes introduced in the HTML 5 spec?

Yes, that is correct. But this is phpBB 3.2 so it might be feasible, plus it's already supported by all browsers (afaik). I guess we'll have to see if we want to go down that route.

http://dev.w3.org/html5/html-author/#the-time-element

[Truemedia]

Why dont you figure the timezone out by comparing the js time with php time in the same range then use the php time of the matching timezone. This way you don't need to store the javascript time for each user in the database and if the user wants to change the time they can correct the timezone from ucp.

This would be less resource intensive and means the phpbb tables dont need to be modified. Also possably adding automatic timezone by default on the registration page with an optional timezone selector, Therefore dealing with people using correct and wrong times on there computer.

[xerces8]

I'm just a forum user, but want to voice my support for this.

With date/time output using JavaScript toLocaleString (or similar) both time format and timezone/DST will be correct for majority of users, without any manual settings from their side, or even the requirement of registration or login.
(users with no JS enabled will get what they have now, so there is no loss)
The only problem might be systems with wrong TZ settings, but if the user can not set his OS TZ, then he probably can't set it in a forum profile either.

[xerces8]

With date/time output using JavaScript toLocaleString (or similar) both time format and timezone/DST will be correct for majority of users, without any manual settings from their side, or even the requirement of registration or login.

Here I put a demo: http://xerces8.comli.com/timepage.html