How to display a Localized Time of a specific city?

Hi, I am working on a program to calculate the Time Difference between cities. A part of the program is to display the current Date/Time of each City.

My question is How do I get the current time of a specific city?

I tried to use:

t = datestr(datetime('now','TimeZone','local','Format','dd-mm-yyyy HH:mm:ss Z'));  %%get the time
t.TimeZone = 'America/NewYork' ;   %%define the city

but it did not work. Even I tried to write the Time Zone as bellow:

t = datestr(datetime('now','America/NewYork','local','Format','dd-mm-yyyy HH:mm:ss Z'));  %%get the time

but I am still not getting results.

Thank You,

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

You need to use the correct format, and the correct syntax for the time zone. (I am using R2018a, although I would be surprised if this format and syntax have changed since it was introduced in R2014b.)

Also, you do not need the datestr call.

With those changes:

t = datetime('now','TimeZone','local','Format','dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss Z');  %%get the time
t.TimeZone = 'America/New_York' ;   %%define the city

produces:

t = 

    datetime

     21-08-2018 14:05:58 -0600

t = 

    datetime

     21-08-2018 16:05:58 -0400

Note: I am in the U.S. Mountain time zone (equivalent to 'America/Denver'), thus the offset.

[Mohamed Habiballa Abdelmoez]

thank you "Star Strider". I just tried again i can clearly see the statement is working but i did not know how to display. Another thing: I used:

t = datetime('now','TimeZone','local',....
            'Format','dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss Z');  %%get the time
t.TimeZone = 'Africa/Khartoum';
display(t)

so I could see the the output on the command windwo, but I would like to see it on a "static text box" in a program made using GUI, to do this I used:

set(handles.text1, 'string' , t);

but it did not display. Even more i tried to write 'value','number' and 'integer' inested of 'string' but still not displaying anything.

[Steven Lord]

You can't set the String property of the control to the datetime variable directly. Call char (or string if you're using a sufficiently recent release) on the datetime variable and set the String property to the output of that call.

>> t = datetime('now','TimeZone','local',....
                'Format','dd-MM-yyyy HH:mm:ss Z');  %%get the time

>> uicontrol('Style', 'text', ...
             'Units', 'normalized', ...
             'Position', [0.3 0.4 0.4 0.2], ...
             'String', char(t))

I made a new control for demonstration purposes, but setting the property of an existing control will also work.

[Star Strider]

@Steven — Thank you.

[Mohamed Habiballa Abdelmoez]

Thank you EVRYONE, I finally found out the problem: As @Steven Lord said I cant set 'char' to be displayed as 'string', so I just needed to convert the formatted 'datetime' into formatted string as follow:

t = datestr(datetime('now','TimeZone','local',...
                     'Format','dd-mm-yyyy HH:mm:ss Z'));
                                       %%get the time

t.TimeZone = 'America/NewYork' ;   %%define the city
datestr(t);           %%convert 't' to formatted string
set(handles.text1, 'string' , t);   %%display on textbox

Answer 2

[Peter Perkins]

Also, the timezones function will pop up a browser window with all your choices for time zones. It's kind of interesting reading.