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til/ruby/get-utc-offset-for-different-time-zones.md

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# Get UTC Offset For Different Time Zones
The [IANA Time Zone Database](https://www.iana.org/time-zones) uses identifiers
like `America/Chicago`, `Asia/Hong_Kong`, `Africa/Nairobi`, etc. as specifiers
for notable locations with time zone information.
> Most timezones correspond to a notable location and the database records all
> known clock transitions for that location; some timezones correspond instead
> to a fixed UTC offset.
—[Theory and pragmatics of the tz code and data](https://data.iana.org/time-zones/theory.html)
These identifiers can be used to look up time zone details with the [`tzinfo`
gem](https://github.com/tzinfo/tzinfo).
Here is an example of passing one to the `#get` method and then getting the UTC
offset in seconds.
```ruby
> require 'tzinfo'
> mountain = TZInfo::Timezone.get('America/Denver')
=> #<TZInfo::DataTimezone: America/Denver>
> mountain.utc_offset
=> -21600
```
We can even get the base UTC offset that doesn't account for DST:
```ruby
> moutain.base_utc_offset
=> -25200
```
Notice, this is the same as the standard offset for a time zone like Phoenix
that doesn't observe DST.
```ruby
> phoenix = TZInfo::Timezone.get('America/Phoenix')
=> #<TZInfo::DataTimezone: America/Phoenix>
> phoenix.utc_offset
=> -25200
```