Issue 731 - twitter-api - Feature Request: time_zone should return an Olson-compatible TZID value

Project Home		Issues

Issue 731:	Feature Request: time_zone should return an Olson-compatible TZID value
	1 person starred this issue and may be notified of changes.	Back to list

Status:	WontFix
Owner:	----
Closed:	Jun 22
Type-Enhancement
Priority-Medium

Reported by igazit, Jun 21, 2009

Currently, the time_zone value returned is not a standard Olson timezone 
identifier (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zoneinfo), which is a shame.

I'm aware that I can compute proper localized times using the utc_offset
value, but having a specific Olson TZID would let me use one of the many
Olson libraries to perform more advanced manipulations and comparisons "for
free". There are Olson timezone manipulation libraries for practically
every language under the sun, and they all use the same underlying database
of TZID's.

It's not a large change, also not an urgent one, but it would:

* make my life as an API consumer that much easier
* be a lovely nod towards standards
* allow application developers to leverage existing Olson libraries to
easily manipulate timestamps returned by the twitter API.

Seems like low-hanging fruit!

Comment 1 by igazit, Jun 21, 2009

FWIW, doug wrote this about time_zone:

"-- time zone: you should store this in a native time format"

(http://groups.google.com/group/twitter-development-talk/msg/293e23a5213f9a50)

"Native format" would be much easier if the input was in a standard form.

Comment 2 by igudo1, Jun 22, 2009

We use a ruby timezone library to get this data for free. This is not going to change
in the current API (we can't break backwards capability) but I will stick this on the
roadmap for consideration in the future versions.

Status: WontFix