system-timezone

System Timezone

A simple package that checks various system configuration files in an attempt to determine what this computer's timezone is (in Olson notation).

This is a 100% javasctipt package that should work on any version of node > 0.10.0.

We do this via 4 methods:

1. If process.env.TZ is set, return it
2. If /etc/timezone is present, return the contents of the file
3. If /etc/localtime is present, and is a symlink to a file in /usr/share/zoneinfo, we can follow the link to know the proper timezone
4. If /etc/localtime is present, but not a symlink, we MD5 the contents and compare it to all other files in, /usr/share/zoneinfo, and then return the name of the first match.

Examples:

var system_timezone = require('system-timezone');

// This is a slow, sync call.  It would be best to call it once at boot and cache the response
// If a timezone cannot be determined, an Error will be thrown.
var thisTimezone = system_timezone();

console.log( thisTimezone ); // America/Los_Angeles

TODO:

• can we test this without messing up system time?
• can we get this to work on windows?