Save dates in UTC - symfony

Question

I'm currently trying to save my dates in database with de UTC timezone.
To get the user timezone, I have a JS function that makes an AJAX request to my back-end like this :
import $ from 'jquery';
import jstz from 'jstz';
export default function setSessionTimezone(route)
{
var timezone = jstz.determine();
$.ajax({
type:'POST', async:true, cache:false, url:route, data:"timezone="+timezone.name(),
success:function(data) { if (data.reloadPage) location.reload(); }
});
}
This method is called only if the timezone is not already in session.
So, for now, I have the user timezone in my back-end, that was the first step.
I want to save it in the database.
With this SO post, I found something interesting : Symfony buildForm convert datetime to local and back to utc
They recommend to use the "model_timezone" and "view_timezone" for the forms, so did I :
use Symfony\Component\Form\AbstractTypeExtension;
use Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\DateType;
use Symfony\Component\Form\Extension\Core\Type\TimeType;
use Symfony\Component\HttpFoundation\Session\SessionInterface;
use Symfony\Component\OptionsResolver\OptionsResolver;
class UtcTypeExtension extends AbstractTypeExtension
{
/**
* #var SessionInterface
*/
private $session;
public function __construct(SessionInterface $session)
{
$this->session = $session;
}
/**
* Return the class of the type being extended.
*/
public static function getExtendedTypes(): iterable
{
return [TimeType::class, DateType::class];
}
public function configureOptions(OptionsResolver $resolver)
{
parent::configureOptions($resolver);
$resolver->setDefaults([
'model_timezone' => 'UTC',
"view_timezone" => $this->session->get('tools_timezone')
]);
}
}
And hooora, it works.
But only within the forms.
If I want to display the dates with Twig or from PHP, I need to get the timezone from session and change the DateTime's Timezone.
So I searched another option.
I found this on the Doctrine Website to change the timezone directly from Doctrine.
This sound interesting, but I'm probably missing a point because it doesn't seem to work, even after I added the following configuration :
doctrine:
dbal:
types:
datetime: SomeNamespace\DoctrineExtensions\DBAL\Types\UTCDateTimeType
So I would like to know if what I want to do is even possible ? Or if I'm forced to override Twig "date" filter to use my timezone ? And if I want to display a date from PHP, I'm also force to use the timezone from the session?

Answer 1

I found something that seem to answer my question.
I added a listener to the doctrine's event "postLoad".
For information, the TimezoneProvider just return the DateTimezone object from the session or UTC if it was not defined.
use DateTime;
use Doctrine\Common\Annotations\AnnotationReader;
use Doctrine\Common\Persistence\Event\LifecycleEventArgs;
use Doctrine\ORM\Mapping\Column;
use SomeNamespace\Provider\TimezoneProvider;
use ReflectionClass;
use ReflectionException;
use Symfony\Component\PropertyAccess\PropertyAccess;
class DateTimeConverterListener
{
/**
* #var AnnotationReader
*/
private $reader;
/**
* #var TimezoneProvider
*/
private $timezoneProvider;
public function __construct(AnnotationReader $reader, TimezoneProvider $timezoneProvider)
{
$this->reader = $reader;
$this->timezoneProvider = $timezoneProvider;
}
public function postLoad(LifecycleEventArgs $args)
{
$entity = $args->getObject();
$propertyAccessor = PropertyAccess::createPropertyAccessor();
try {
$reflection = new ReflectionClass(get_class($entity));
//We search the properties where we need to update the Timezone.
foreach ($reflection->getProperties() as $property) {
$annotation = $this->reader->getPropertyAnnotation($property, Column::class);
if (!$annotation instanceof Column)
continue;
switch ($annotation->type) {
case "time":
case "date":
case "datetime":
/** #var DateTime|null $attribute */
$attribute = $propertyAccessor->getValue($entity, $property->getName());
if (null === $attribute)
continue 2;
//The getTimezone function returns UTC in case of no session information. And because it's a
// DateTime object, we don't need to set the value after the modification
$attribute->setTimezone($this->timezoneProvider->getTimezone());
break;
}
}
} catch (ReflectionException $e) {
//Abort the transformation
}
}
}
To display the date properly with the twig filter "|date", I also update Twig through an event :
use SomeNamespace\Provider\TimezoneProvider;
use Twig\Environment;
use Twig\Extension\CoreExtension;
class SetupTwigTimezoneListener
{
/**
* #var TimezoneProvider
*/
private $timezoneProvider;
/**
* #var Environment
*/
private $twig;
public function __construct(TimezoneProvider $timezoneProvider, Environment $twig)
{
$this->timezoneProvider = $timezoneProvider;
$this->twig = $twig;
}
public function onKernelRequest()
{
//Define the timezone of the application based of the timezone of the user
$this->twig->getExtension(CoreExtension::class)->setTimezone($this->timezoneProvider->getTimezone()->getName());
}
}
I'm not quite sure this is a perfect solution, but it seem to work.