How to add a timezone configuration setting to a user profile

This post is just about as short and simple as it gets. I'm working on an application that will support scheduling, meetings and calendars for users across multiple timezones. So, one of the things that I'm going to need to track is what timezone the user works in. This will require adding a timezone attribute to the user's profile record. It's probably worth noting that you could also add this attribute to a User record rather than a Profile record if that's where you want to keep your configuration.

So here we go, three simple steps.

Step 1: Add the column to my profile table with the following generated migration:

  rails g migration AddTimezoneToProfiles timezone:string

and execute the migration with:

  rake db:migrate

Step 2: Add the new field to my existing profile edit page:

  <%= form_for(@profile) do |f| %>

    ...

    <div class="field">

      <%= f.label :timezone %><br>

      <%= f.time_zone_select(:timezone, ActiveSupport::TimeZone.us_zones) %>

    </div>

    …

  <% end %> // form_for

Note the use of the time_zone_select helper and the ActiveSupport::TimeZone.us_zones method to push most of the work off to Rails.

Step 3: Allow the controller to accept the timezone field.

  def profile_params

    params.require(:profile).permit( :address, … , :timezone)

  end

And that's it. My form now allows the user to select their timezone preference and stores it on their profile record.