[Catalyst] User timezones

[Christian Lackas]

Hi Everybody,

I wonder how you handle user-specific timezones in Catalyst.

Our application is used by customers in various locations, and thus
timezones. I would now like to be able to specify the user's timezone in
his database entry and then show all times to her accordingly.
Most of the time data is stored in the database (also show some
filesystem dates at other places, and there are probably more sources,
but let's concentrate on the database first).
Is there a way to handle this transparently? If I use
inflation/deflation (as does DBIx::Class::DateTime for instance),
I could handle the conversion transparently, however, since the timezone
depends on the user, I cannot define it in the DBIx add_columns()
definition. And manually adjusting the timezone after the data leaves
the Model is probably no good idea either (to easy to forget something
or make a mistake).

Is there any magic switch I could set (for instance if the user is
authorized or the session restored) to automatically get the right time
for the user?

Christian