Automatic timezone conversion in Eloquent?

[redelschaap]

I am developing an application that has an API where consumers can send requests containing dates. They would post these dates in ISO format, containing a timezone reference. Currently, we have to do a conversion ourselves to the application's timezone (typically UTC). The framework does not convert the timezone when storing dates into the database. To be honest, I would expect this kind of magic from Laravel.

Let's imagine a model with a date cast:

class BlogPost extends Model {
    protected $casts = [
        'published_at' => 'datetime',
    ];
}

When inserting a model from an API request that accepts an ISO formatted datetime string, we need to store this as follows:

BlogPost::create([
    // ...
    'published_at' => Carbon::parse($request['publishedAt'])->setTimezone(config('app.timezone'));
    // ...
]);

It would be very nice, and would feel much more like Laravel, when we can leave out the setTimezone() part.

Now, I know that this has already been discussed before and until now the message was that this behavior was intended. But with all the good magic Laravel does on other parts of the framework, it really feels weird that It lacks this kind of magic. At least for me, and given the number of questions about this, also for many other developers.

Would the framework be open for automatic timezone conversion? Perhaps in the next major release, since this will probably break some applications. Although it should only break things when developers currently adjust time or anticipate on this behavior in another way than setting the timezone themselves. I can also think of an option where this would be an opt-in or opt-out function, just like with the preventLazyLoading or preventSilentlyDiscardingAttributes features.

I am willing to write a PR, but only when it has a chance of getting accepted of course. Please let me know!

[shaedrich]

When you use form requests, you can do

class MyFormRequest
{
    public function rules(): array
    {
        return [
            // …
        ];
    }

    public function passedValidation()
    {
        $this->merge([
            'publishedAt' => $this->date('publishedAt')->setTimezone(config('app.timezone')),
        ]);
    }
}

I know, it's not a solution, but it can be a workaround, especially if you use this in a base class.

[redelschaap]

Of course there are multiple ways to make this a bit easier, but nothing would be as easy as when it "just works" out of the box.