openstack team mailing list archive

["Jiang, Yunhong" <yunhong.jiang@xxxxxxxxx>]

Rob, thanks for comments.
I totally agree with you that aware datetime object is better than naive one. 
The key thing is, utcnow() will return naive object, that means in some time, we have to use naive object to compare with utcnow(), and we need a conversion function to convert from aware to naive. The normalize_time() is the best candidate for this purpose, but it will fail to convert to naive datetime object in some situation. That's why I send the mail. I just want to change the normalize_time() to make sure it will always return naive object.

Thanks
--jyh

> -----Original Message-----
> From: Robert Collins [mailto:robertc@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]
> Sent: Monday, September 10, 2012 3:25 AM
> To: Jiang, Yunhong
> Cc: eglynn@xxxxxxxxxx; openstack@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: Re: [Openstack] One potential issue on the normalize_time() in
> timeutils
> 
> On Mon, Sep 10, 2012 at 3:09 AM, Jiang, Yunhong <yunhong.jiang@xxxxxxxxx>
> wrote:
> > Hi, Eoghan and all,
> >
> >         When I implement an enhancement to trusted_filter, I need utilize
> timeutils() to parse ISO time. However, I suspect there is one potential issue in
> normalize_time() and want to get some input from your side.
> >
> >         In normalize_time(), if the parameter "timestamp" is an aware
> object (http://docs.python.org/library/datetime.html) , it's output will vary
> depends on the input. If the timestamp is UTC time, it will be return as is
> without convention, i.e still an aware object. However, if it's not an UTC time, it
> will be converted to be a naive object.
> >         This mean that the function will return different type depends on
> input, that's not so good IMHO.
> >
> >         The worse is, any compare/substract between naïve object and
> > aware object will fail. Because the timeutils.utcnow() and
> > datetime.datetime.now() returns naive object, so compare/substract
> > between the uctnow() and normalize_time() may fail, or not, depends on
> > input from the API user. I'm a bit surprised that changes-since works
> > on such situation :)
> >
> >         I suspect this is caused by the "if offset". When timestamp is
> naïve object, the offset is None. Thus check "if offset" will avoid operation type
> exception. However, if the timestamp is UTC time, the offset will be
> date.timeslot(0), which will return false also for "if offset".
> >
> >         Are there any special reason that we need keep aware object if
> input is at UTC time already? Can I changes the function to always return naive
> object? If yes, I can create a patch for it.
> 
> You are probably better off creating an aware datetime object, and using them
> pervasively across the codebase, than using naive objects.
> As you note, they are not interoperable, and I've seen countless bugs where
> folk try to mix and match. If we want to show local date time to users
> *anywhere*, we'll need TZ aware objects, which is why that variation is the
> one to standardise on. Otherwise, you end up with multiple conversion points,
> and you can guarantee that at least one will get it wrong.
> 
> -Rob