Ruby upgrade (from 1.8.7) on Rails 3.0.20 application causing time zone weirdness

Question

I'm upgrading an big, old, clunky Rails application's Ruby (mostly so I don't have to re-install REE on my reformatted laptop) and I'm getting bitten pretty badly by timezone issues. Basically, pulling datetimes out of the database is not converting them to local time correctly:

New System - Ruby 2.1.2, Ubuntu 14.04

>> Time.zone.name
=> "Central Time (US & Canada)"
>> ActiveRecord::Base.time_zone_aware_attributes
=> true
>> ActiveRecord::Base.default_timezone
=> :utc
>> Transaction.last.created_at
=> 2014-07-15 02:09:02 UTC
>> Transaction.last.created_at_before_type_cast
=> 2014-07-15 02:09:02 UTC
>> Transaction.last.created_at.localtime
=> 2014-07-14 21:09:02 -0500
>> exit
$ date
Mon Jul 14 22:27:50 CDT 2014

Old System - REE, Ubuntu 12.04

>> Transaction.last.created_at
=> Mon, 14 Jul 2014 22:03:11 CDT -05:00
>> Transaction.last.created_at_before_type_cast
=> Tue Jul 15 03:03:11 UTC 2014
>> Transaction.last.created_at.localtime
=> Mon Jul 14 22:03:11 -0500 2014

As you can see, I've ensured that time_zone_aware_attributes is set, the zone is set (I set it in the environment.rb), and ActiveRecord is storing the times in UTC (as expected). I'm so stumped on this. Anyone have any ideas?

Update

  before :all do
    @current_tz = Time.zone
    Time.zone = 'Pacific Time (US & Canada)'
  end

  after :all do
    Time.zone = @current_tz
  end

  it 'should report time as Pacific time' do
    shift = FactoryGirl.create(:shift)
    new_obj = Transaction.create(shift: shift, time: DateTime.new(2013, 3, 31, 0, 0, 0, 0), amount: 0)
    new_obj.reload
    I18n.localize(new_obj.time, format: :timeonly).should_not == '12:00 am' #We created it with a UTC date, but it should get I18n'd to Pacific time
  end

#en.yml
  time:
    formats:
      timeonly: "%l:%M %p"

The above test is also failing. The I18n stuff seems totally broken.

Update 2

I seem to have isolated the problem to 1.9.3 -> 2.1. Using 1.9.3 is fine, I suppose, and I guess I'll just run that on the new server until I upgrade Rails. Sad. I'd still love to hear any suggestions about fixes.

Answer 1

Try using the I18n helpers to format/offset your time output - and force timezone (if needed)

puts I18n.localize(Transaction.last.created_at, format: :long)

Or

Time.use_zone("Central Time (US & Canada)") do
  puts I18n.localize(Transaction.last.created_at, format: :long)
end

I recommend you set your default Time.zone to UTC as well and update it for each user explicitly as needed - here is a blog post that might be helpful: http://jessehouse.com/blog/2013/11/15/working-with-timezones-and-ruby-on-rails/