My app runs on Linux servers, where the time (naturally) set to UTC/GMT. However the app is developed on Mac desktops where the time is typically set to a local timezone.
I could change every new Date() in my code to run:
var date = new Date().getTime();
And thus ensure dates on the server are always GMT, but that seems inelegant.
I understand previous versions of node used to always return UTC/GMT. Is there any way to bring this behavior back?
Edit: Removed adding timezone offset to getTime() per comments - since getTime() is already in UTC.
From the MDN docs on Date#getTime:
The value returned by the getTime method is the number of milliseconds since 1 January 1970 00:00:00 UTC.
Assuming you're storing dates/times as numbers (which I would recommend), getTime is already UTC, always.
Suppose your client then requests a date from the server. If the server provides the date as timestamp, which is a number, the client can then do:
new Date(timestamp);
And it will be correctly adjusted to the local time on the client.
Of course, maybe I'm misunderstanding your problem. But I just want to point out that this...
new Date().getTime() + new Date().getTimezoneOffset();
...should never really make sense. It's taking a UTC-based time and then offsetting it further, in essence double-offsetting a time.
moment.js is a popular node and browser module for dealing with dates. It has a utc mode that should give you what you need. http://momentjs.com/docs/#/manipulating/utc/