Another timezone question

[ExactlyMyPoint]

I am developing a strategy that takes a trade at a very specific time. Let's say 11:05 am Pacific Time.

I have code as follows

        
        private void TakeTrade()
        {
            TimeSpan timeToTakeTrade = new TimeSpan(11, 5, 0);
            DateTime Min5Time = Times[1][0];
            if (BarsInProgress == 1)    // 5 minute bars
            {
                if (Min5Time.TimeOfDay.CompareTo(timeToTakeTrade) == 0)
                    ProcessTrade();
            }
            else if (BarsInProgress == 0)    // daily bars
            {
                // do nothing
            }
        }

This works on my computer in Oregon, however, I am going to distribute this to people all over the country and it will not be accurate if they are running it say in Florida which is Eastern Time.

What do I need to do to set the timeToTakeTrade value correctly? Do I get the timezone from the user's computer or is there a better way?

Thanks

[Dexter]

You could use DateTime.Now() from the framework to get the time directly from the user's computer

[ExactlyMyPoint]

But I need to know the equivalent of 11:05 am PST in whatever timezone the person is running on, not the current time.

[Dexter]

Ah got it, I misunderstood. You can use TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime to convert a set DateTime between timezones pretty easily. Try this

DateTime myTradeTimer = new DateTime(2011, 02, 17, 11, 05, 00);
TimeZoneInfo PacificTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Pacific Standard Time");
TimeZoneInfo EasternTimeZone = TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Eastern Standard Time");
DateTime inEST = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(myTradeTimer, EasternTimeZone); // returns a DateTime in EST
DateTime inPST = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(myTradeTimer, PacificTimeZone); // returns a DateTime in PST

myTradeTimer is just set to today, but you can ignore day of course and use Hour, Minute or whatever from inEST, inPST and so forth.

[NinjaTrader_RyanM1]

Thanks, Dexter. ToUniversalTime() can also be useful for this to convert all times into the same time zone. You could add / subtract from this to get to pacific.

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.datetime.touniversaltime.aspx

[Dexter]

Something occured to me at lunch! There was a minor logic error in my example, so it would give incorrect results because DateTime uses local timezone, converting to PST would push the date off of your local timezone. Try this, it will give correct time zones on any computer (using UTC):

DateTime tradeTime = new DateTime(2011, 2, 17, 19, 5, 00, DateTimeKind.Utc); // this is 11:05 PST in UTC
DateTime inPST = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(tradeTime, TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Pacific Standard Time"));
DateTime inEST = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(tradeTime, TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Eastern Standard Time"));
DateTime inMST = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(tradeTime, TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Mountain Standard Time"));
DateTime inCST = TimeZoneInfo.ConvertTime(tradeTime, TimeZoneInfo.FindSystemTimeZoneById("Central Standard Time"));