Recordings dates with incorrect time zones

[pavel-manylov]

Example response from BBB (0.8) has this information:

<startTime>Mon Apr 09 17:40:55 YEKT 2012</startTime>

but :startTime param will have this value:

1.9.3-p0 :023 > t=$bigbluebutton_api.get_recordings(:meetingID=>meeting.id)[:recordings][0][:startTime]
 => Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:40:55 +0000

I wrote small monkey patch for this issue:

module BigBlueButton
  class BigBlueButtonFormatter
    # converts a value in the @hash to DateTime
    def to_datetime(key)
      unless @hash.has_key?(key) and @hash[key]
        nil
      else
        # BBB >= 0.8 uses the unix epoch for all time related values
        # older versions use strings

        # a number but in a String class
        if (@hash[key].class == String && @hash[key].to_i.to_s == @hash[key])
          value = @hash[key].to_i
        else
          value = @hash[key]
        end

        if value.is_a?(Numeric)
          result = value == 0 ? nil : DateTime.parse(Time.at(value/1000.0).to_s)
        else
          if value.downcase == "null"
            result = nil
          else
            result = Time.parse(value).to_datetime #this line has been changed
          end
        end

        @hash[key] = result
      end
    end
  end  
end

And now:

1.9.3-p0 :002 > t=$bigbluebutton_api.get_recordings(:meetingID=>meeting.id)[:recordings][0][:startTime]
 => Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:40:55 +0600

[daronco]

Hi rap-kasta, thanks for the report. I'll test it when I get some time and fix the gem.

[daronco]

@rap-kasta I'm not sure if Time.parse is the solution. Take a look at these examples:

ruby-1.9.2-p290 :008 > Time.parse("Mon Apr 09 17:40:55 UTC 2012")
 => 2012-04-09 17:40:55 UTC 
ruby-1.9.2-p290 :005 > Time.parse("Mon Apr 09 17:40:55 YEKT 2012")
 => 2012-04-09 17:40:55 -0300 

The second one shows the problem. I tried to parse the string in your example but it doesn't parse the timezone correctly. It shows -0300, my local timezone.

But anyways, since BBB 0.8 beta4 getRecordings returns a timestamp, just like the other API calls. See: https://groups.google.com/d/msg/bigbluebutton-dev/StwQdDF6bdA/FQ5oO9G8bSYJ

So I'll probably just remove the parsing of strings, we won't need it anymore.

[daronco]

Oops, I guess it's better to maintain the parsing of strings so BBB 0.7 will still be supported.

[daronco]

I've tried a more specific parsing method that should behave better, but still the timezone YEKT is not identified:

1.9.2p290 :019 > DateTime.strptime("Mon Apr 09 17:40:55 UTC 2012", '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y')
 => Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:40:55 +0000  -- OK
1.9.2p290 :020 > DateTime.strptime("Mon Apr 09 17:40:55 EST 2012", '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y')
 => Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:40:55 -0500 -- OK
1.9.2p290 :021 > DateTime.strptime("Mon Apr 09 17:40:55 PST 2012", '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y')
 => Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:40:55 -0800 -- OK
1.9.2p290 :017 > DateTime.strptime("Mon Apr 09 17:40:55 YEKT 2012", '%a %b %d %H:%M:%S %Z %Y')
 => Mon, 09 Apr 2012 17:40:55 +0000 -- NOT OK