[SalesForce] Why is the date saving as an hour later

The company default time zone is GMT (+00:00), and a date sent using the API is coming through like this:

09:16:37.032 (32355740)|USER_DEBUG|[17]|DEBUG|Date/Time: 2014-06-19T10:16:00.977

It arrives as a string in an HTTP GET request, the following apex code runs to convert it to the only datetime format it seems to accept:

relatedRecord.Receipt_Received_At__c = Datetime.valueOf(g_datetime.substring(0, 19).replace('T', ' '));
update relatedRecord;

But then when I go to view it in the saved record detail page, it is showing 11:16, not 10:16. I've tried changing valueOf() to valueOfGmt() but it doesn't change it. Why is the date saving as GMT+01:00?

Best Answer

I believe the issue is that your date is being sent through without knowledge of the timezone it is working in and so is assuming GMT and then displaying it as BST (correctly given we are in BST currently). Salesforce stores all times in GMT and then using your locale determines the correct display and return values.

Try adding a timezone designator (such as +01:00) to your string to get the system to recognise it is being sent in as BST and so should save internally as GMT (1 hour behind). The system generating your string will need to handle this going forward though by correctly parameterizing the datetimes for use in the future.

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] How to convert date string to DateTime type without GMT

Looks like DateTime.parse() takes the string and parses it based on the context users locale to produce a GMT date/time in the database. DateTime.format(String) should create an output string in based on the timezone of the current context user.

So you should be able to use when data comes in:

DateTime dt = DateTime.parse('11/6/2014 12:00 AM');

Then when you go to call the web service you'd use something like:

String dtOut = dt.format('d/M/y'); -- Or M/d/y if you're using American dates.

And for the bonus, you could just use a different argument in the format function such as:

String timOut = dt.format('h:m a');

[SalesForce] Convert Datetime of one Timezone to Datetime of another TimeZone

Your approach is perfect to convert values according to specific Timezone as:

System.debug(' Current Time is '+ DateTime.now() );
System.debug(' Converted Time to PST is ' +
                  DateTime.now().format('MM/dd/yyyy HH:mm:ss',
                  'America/Los_Angeles')
             );

However you can convertTimezone SOQL function in your query. It converts DateTime field to the user’s time zone.:

Case c = [SELECT Id, convertTimezone(SlaStartDate) FROM Case WHERE Id='caseId'];

Best Answer

Related Solutions

[SalesForce] How to convert date string to DateTime type without GMT

[SalesForce] Convert Datetime of one Timezone to Datetime of another TimeZone

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