Django with system timezone setting vs user's individual timezones

Question

How well does Django handle the case of different timezones for each user? Ideally I would like to run the server in the UTC timezone (eg, in settings.py set TIME_ZONE=\"UTC\")

Answer 1

It's not that hard to write timezone aware code in django:

I've written simple django application which helps handle timezones issue in django projects: https://github.com/paluh/django-tz. It's based on Brosner (django-timezone) code but takes different approach to solve the problem - I think it implements something similar to yours and FernandoEscher propositions.

All datetime values are stored in data base in one timezone (according to TIME_ZONE setting) and conversion to appropriate value (i.e. user timezone) are done in templates and forms (there is form widget for datetimes fields which contains additional subwidget with timezone). Every datetime conversion is explicit - no magic.

Additionally there is per thread cache which allows you simplify these datatime conversions (implementation is based on django i18n translation machinery).

When you want to remember user timezone, you should add timezone field to profile model and write simple middleware (follow the example from doc).