Realm UTC Offset

[Vrul]

Is there a way to consistently get a realm's UTC offset other than hardcoding them all in?

[Seerah]

Could you compare the UTC with the game time?
http://wowprogramming.com/docs/api/GetGameTime

[Vrul]

Originally Posted by Seerah Could you compare the UTC with the game time?

No, that gives you the server time which can change when you switch to an instance.

[Rilgamon]

Formatting 'date' with http://strftime.net/ should help. (I'd guess %z / %Z)
http://wow.gamepedia.com/API_date

[Choonstertwo]

Originally Posted by Rilgamon Formatting 'date' with http://strftime.net/ should help. (I'd guess %z / %Z) http://wow.gamepedia.com/API_date

%Z is the time zone name (without the offset), so it's not much use without a hardcoded mapping of time zone names to offsets.

%z is the time zone offset on Mac, but it's an alias of %Z on Windows.

(I did a bit of research on the date function and which specifiers work on each platform here and here)

[Vrul]

Originally Posted by Rilgamon Formatting 'date' with http://strftime.net/ should help. (I'd guess %z / %Z)

As ChoonsterTwo stated %z is the same as %Z for Windows but more importantly that would only tell me the computer's UTC offset when I need the realm's UTC offset.

[SDPhantom]

If you get the computer's offset, you can calculate the server by comparing server time with computer time.

[Vrul]

Originally Posted by SDPhantom If you get the computer's offset, you can calculate the server by comparing server time with computer time.

But I need the realm time which isn't always the same as the server time. I was hoping someone knew a clever trick or an API I missed that would avoid the convoluted mess needed to get something so simple (and still not even be guaranteed to be correct). As best as I can figure there will always be an edge case where I won't know the realm time for sure.

[Talyrius]

It's a long shot, but I'd suggest asking for it on the Wish List forum.

[Vrul]

Yeah, I just read through all the notes for GetGameTime and whoever wrote that came to the same conclussion as me, there will always be an edge case where you just don't know.

I also found that when you logout from one realm and login to a realm with a different time zone, the first realm's time will be returned by GetGameTime until WORLD_MAP_UPDATE fires the second time.

[SDPhantom]

It was more reliable before the whole CRZ stuff rolled in. Now the server handling the zone you're in isn't necessarily hosted by your realm server and may be hosted by another realm at any other time. I think there are still restrictions in place in which racial capitals are still restricted to your local realm or "connected" realms. I suppose the next question is, are all "connected" realms located in the same data center in respect to the realms they're attached to?

PS: We know instance servers can and often do span between separate data centers.