How to apply timezones to Django Model DateTimeFields

Question

When a Django model contains a DateTimeField the date is always saved in UTC timezone. If you add a date that had a time zone the information is translated and will be retrieved differently. This happens even if the TIME_ZONE has been set in settings.py and the date was created using timezone.localtime(timezone.now()). The same issue happens when the date is added dynamically, like with models.DateTimeField(auto_now_add=True) or models.DateTimeField(auto_now=True).

How can I retrieve or save date times in the correct timezone?

Answer 1

The date may come out in UTC format, but you can always convert it back to your correct timezone.

from django.conf import settings
from django.utils import timezone

def getTimezone():
    return pytz.timezone(settings.TIME_ZONE)

model.myDateTimeField.astimezone(getTimezone()) # Converts UTC to the timezone in settings.py

If the datetime was saved in a different timezone altogether, this would not work. Don't do that I guess.