Make TZ configurable

[aochsner]

This is an attempt at #1600

[rashidkpc]

There are a number of challenges in implementing this:

• It needs to work in the time picker as well
• Needs to be a GUI around this
• It needs to work back to 1900 at least
• It needs to be configurable on a per-field basis, thus requires field formatters. Update: I'm fine with this being part of the field formatter pull.
• It needs to be configurable "per user". Likely as a cookie or a localStorage thing. This is probably the biggest thing since we don't really have this concept right now, and no way for the user to manage their state settings. Update: I agree this is separate, and we can deal with it when we get there.

[ignaciovazquez]

Hi Rashid,

Since developing a more complete approach sounds like a big task, is it possible to have something like a global setting work in the meantime?

I wouldn't be a perfect solution to the TZ issue, but it would allow many people waiting for a definitive fix for #1600 deploy their systems to production.

Right now, the best we have is to ask users to change the timezone settings in their computer. :-/

[ignaciovazquez]

It feels like waiting for Field Formatters + a User Module + the actual TZ implementation will take a long time.

I'm willing -as I'm sure many people are- to start tackling the TZ issue, but we need an action plan to move forward. What would an acceptable solution be for the time-being (even if it's not multi-user and index-wide) so we can begin working on it?

[aochsner]

I tend to agree with @ignaciovazquez My primary use case is to make all displayed timestamps be in a particular timezone. I'm trying to ease the migration from Kibana 2 where we had this functionality to Kibana 4 (the sooner the better).

It needs to work in the time picker as well

I think it does but maybe I missed something. Could you expand on that?

It needs to be configurable on a per-field basis, thus requires field formatters.

I'm definitely not familiar enough w/ the code to really grok this. I have noticed that this PR does break the ability to set up time-series index patterns. Could this be causing that? Just haven't had time to investigate further. I don't have a need for different fields to be displayed in different timezones.

Needs to be a GUI around this

I have this in the way of Advanced Settings for now

It needs to work back to 1900 at least

Fixed to use moment-timezone-with-data which is all the timezone data it has as opposed to 2010-2020.

It needs to be configurable "per user". Likely as a cookie or a localStorage thing. This is probably the biggest thing since we don't really have this concept right now, and no way for the user to manage their state settings.

Maybe, but to me that's also an advanced/separate requirement. Even if I had this option, I would want the ability to set a global default for each user to start with.

[rashidkpc]

If we just call this a default. I see a few issues here:

• This doesn't take effect everywhere until the page is fully refreshed. I suspect this is due to the memoizing of the convert function: https://github.com/aochsner/kibana/blob/issue/1600/src/kibana/components/index_patterns/_field_formats.js#L162-L168 . A reference will need to be kept and the cache cleared whenever this setting is updated
• pre_zone for the date histogram aggregation is not updated, so day/week/month boundaries start at odd places.

  kibana/src/kibana/components/agg_types/buckets/date_histogram.js

  Line 82 in 944f908

  output.params.pre_zone = tzOffset;

• This still needs a GUI of some kind, at least a select box option for the advanced editor. This should be a very simple change. Update: I added this here: Add a 'select' type to the advanced setting screen #3638 feel free to merge it with the branch on your fork. Update 2: Add a 'select' type to the advanced setting screen #3638 has been merged into master.
• Needs tests to make sure that the memoized values are cleared and the date formatter is correctly returning the timezone adjusted dates.

[rashidkpc]

Is this listener needed? Can you make a single function that handles memoization and setting the initial default timezone

[rashidkpc]

#3638 has now been merged, you can replace this with:

    'dateFormat:tz': {
      value: 'Default',
      description: 'Which timezone should be used',
      type: 'select',
      options: _.union(['Default'], moment.tz.names())
    },

[aochsner]

Thanks for the feedback @rashidkpc I'm hoping to have some time by next week to pick this back up

[wols]

+1

[rashidkpc]

I'm going to close this for now, please feel free to open a new pull when you get around to updating it.