Convert DateTime String to UTC in rails

Question

I have a string like this:

\"2010-01-01 12:30:00\"

I need that to convert to UTC from the current local time zone.

I tried this, but it

Answer 1

In Rails 4 and above you can directly use in_time_zone

"2010-01-01 12:30:00".in_time_zone
#=> Fri, 01 Jan 2010 12:30:00 EST -05:00

"2010-01-01 12:30:00".in_time_zone.utc
#=> 2010-01-01 17:30:00 UTC