Which timezone does Django use in DateField's auto_now_add?

Question

How does Django write the date field when the field is marked with auto_now_add attribute?

Is it like datetime.now().date() or timezone.now().date()?

In other words, which timezone does it use to get the current date?

Answer 1

Looks like it uses datetime.date.today(), which would be the local date of the system:

db/models/fields/__init__.py:

class DateField(Field):
    ...
    def pre_save(self, model_instance, add):
        if self.auto_now or (self.auto_now_add and add):
            value = datetime.date.today()
            setattr(model_instance, self.attname, value)
            return value

If you wanted a different behavior you could remove auto_now_add=True then connect the model's pre_save signal to a receiver that would set your field to the date of your choice.

Alternatively, you could override the model's save method and set the field there.