Live demos

• Google Maps: http://scratch.andrewl.in/timezone-picker/example_site/gmaps_example.html
• OpenLayers: http://scratch.andrewl.in/timezone-picker/example_site/openlayers_example.html

Prerequisites

• jQuery
• Google Maps Javascript API v3 or OpenLayers

Usage

See gmaps_example.html and openlayers_example.html

./setup_example.sh
./run.sh
http://localhost:8000/gmaps_example.html
http://localhost:8000/openlayers_example.html

Setup

To use in your site, extract tz_json.tgz to a web-accessible location on your server and pass in the path as the jsonRootUrl option

Options

• fillColor: the color of the fill of the rendered timezones (default '#ffcccc')
• fillOpacity: the opacity of the outline of rendered timezones (default 0.5)
• initialLat: the initial latitude for the center point of the map (default 0)
• initialLng: the initial longitude for the center point of the map (default 0)
• initialZoom: the initial zoom level of the map (1-20, default to 2, 1 is most zoomed out)
• jsonRootUrl: the default root URL for the JSON data files (default '/tz_json/')
• strokeColor: the color of the outline of rendered timezones (default '#ff0000')
• strokeWeight: the width of the outline of rendered timezones (default 2)
• strokeOpacity: the opacity of the outline of rendered timezones (default 0.7)
• onHover: callback when a timezone is hovered. Parameters: utcOffset (in minutes), tzNames (array of strings)
• onReady: callback when all the data files are loaded
• onSelected: callback when a timezone is selected via the infowindow. Parameters: olsonName, utcOffset (in minutes), tzName (eg. EST, GMT)
• useOpenLayers: use OpenLayers instead of Google maps

Methods

• showInfoWindow(htmlString): show an infoWindow for the current selected region. Takes an HTML string as a parameter
• hideInfoWindow(): hide it
• setDate(Date): set the "relative" date for the picker for proper timezone names (eg. EST vs EDT)
• selectZone(olsonName): programmatically select a timezone

CSS Classes

• timezone-picker-infowindow: the main content container for the infowindow
• NOTE: if you are using Twitter Bootstrap and Google maps or OpenLayers, you may need something like

#zonepicker img {
  max-width: none;
}

to prevent distortion of your map controls (thanks michaelahlers!)

For Data File Generation

You do not need to do all of the steps mentioned below if you're going to use tz_json.tgz (the timezone data JSON files are in there already).

This plugin uses a bunch of timezone data files on a web server.

• bounding_boxes.json: an array of bounding boxes for each timezone (for hit testing)
• hover_regions.json: an array of polygons representing hover regions for each timezone
• polygons/*.json: polygon definitions for each timezone

Requires:

• Python 2.6+
• libgeos-dev (sudo apt-get install libgeos-dev) (for Mac OS, brew install geos)
• pip (sudo easy_install pip)
• shapely (sudo pip install shapely)
• pytz (sudo pip install pytz)
• simplejson (sudo pip install simplejson)

To Generate all timezone data JSON files

• Download and extract the tz_world file from http://efele.net/maps/tz/world/tz_world.zip
• python script/gen_json.py <path-to-tz_world.shp> <output-dir>
• Be very patient...

Acknowledgments

• Thanks to Eric Muller for creating the timezone shape files (http://efele.net/maps/tz/world)
• Thanks to Zachary Forest Johnson for the shp file loading python scripts (http://indiemaps.com/blog/2008/03/easy-shapefile-loading-in-python/)