How to get a time zone from a location using latitude and longitude coordinates?

Question

Given the latitude and longitude of a location, how does one know what time zone is in effect in that location?

In most cases, we are looking for an IANA/Olson time z

Answer 1

You can use geolocator.js for easily getting timezone and more...

It uses Google APIs that require a key. So, first you configure geolocator:

geolocator.config({
    language: "en",
    google: {
        version: "3",
        key: "YOUR-GOOGLE-API-KEY"
    }
});

Get TimeZone if you have the coordinates:

geolocator.getTimeZone(options, function (err, timezone) {
    console.log(err || timezone);
});

Example output:

{
    id: "Europe/Paris",
    name: "Central European Standard Time",
    abbr: "CEST",
    dstOffset: 0,
    rawOffset: 3600,
    timestamp: 1455733120
}

Locate then get TimeZone and more

If you don't have the coordinates, you can locate the user position first.

Example below will first try HTML5 Geolocation API to get the coordinates. If it fails or rejected, it will get the coordinates via Geo-IP look-up. Finally, it will get the timezone and more...

var options = {
    enableHighAccuracy: true,
    timeout: 6000,
    maximumAge: 0,
    desiredAccuracy: 30,
    fallbackToIP: true, // if HTML5 fails or rejected
    addressLookup: true, // this will get full address information
    timezone: true,
    map: "my-map" // this will even create a map for you
};
geolocator.locate(options, function (err, location) {
    console.log(err || location);
});

Example output:

{
    coords: {
        latitude: 37.4224764,
        longitude: -122.0842499,
        accuracy: 30,
        altitude: null,
        altitudeAccuracy: null,
        heading: null,
        speed: null
    },
    address: {
        commonName: "",
        street: "Amphitheatre Pkwy",
        route: "Amphitheatre Pkwy",
        streetNumber: "1600",
        neighborhood: "",
        town: "",
        city: "Mountain View",
        region: "Santa Clara County",
        state: "California",
        stateCode: "CA",
        postalCode: "94043",
        country: "United States",
        countryCode: "US"
    },
    formattedAddress: "1600 Amphitheatre Parkway, Mountain View, CA 94043, USA",
    type: "ROOFTOP",
    placeId: "ChIJ2eUgeAK6j4ARbn5u_wAGqWA",
    timezone: {
        id: "America/Los_Angeles",
        name: "Pacific Standard Time",
        abbr: "PST",
        dstOffset: 0,
        rawOffset: -28800
    },
    flag: "//cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/flag-icon-css/2.3.1/flags/4x3/us.svg",
    map: {
        element: HTMLElement,
        instance: Object, // google.maps.Map
        marker: Object, // google.maps.Marker
        infoWindow: Object, // google.maps.InfoWindow
        options: Object // map options
    },
    timestamp: 1456795956380
}