Auto detect user's timezone using his ip in rails

Question

I want to find a users time zone from his ip address. If the user is travelling the application should be able to find out the current time zone in which he is.

Answer 1

You can't, at least reliably: think of proxies, ISP NAT or VPNs, even if a user seems in a country it doesn't mean he's really there.

I would suggest to let the user choose his preferred time zone, and let him alter it if he needs to.

Otherwise, have a look at this: Determine a User's Timezone

Answer 2

Yes, you can get the timezone in rails based on the user's IP address but it won't be accurate always because of proxies or VPNs.

Why?

• Your application will get only the latest IP(think ISP provider and VPN) from the request header and you can find timezone based on it.

However, if you have a chance to overlook this shortcoming you can use check this gem with the IP lookup service. To test, you can use the ipapi_com service(it is free up to 45/minute). For the implementation hints, you can have a look here.