[HN Gopher] Show HN: A Simple Server to Match Long/Lat to a Time...
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       Show HN: A Simple Server to Match Long/Lat to a TimeZone
        
       I figured this might be useful to folks.  It's a simple PHP server
       that requires a single-table database (It's fairly "agnostic," but
       all my uses are in MySQL).  I won't publish any of the servers that
       I've set up for my apps, because someone is bound to write an
       application that drives my bandwidth into the stratosphere.  I
       could definitely take it further, but this gives me all I need for
       my purposes.  Here's an app I wrote, that uses it:
       https://apps.apple.com/us/app/we-are-never-alone/id650482602...
        
       Author : ChrisMarshallNY
       Score  : 14 points
       Date   : 2025-05-20 21:43 UTC (1 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (github.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (github.com)
        
       | cyberax wrote:
       | Super nice! I wanted to do an Arduino-based GPS clock that always
       | shows the correct local time, but got bogged down getting the
       | exact timezone boundaries.
       | 
       | Thanks for bringing up https://github.com/evansiroky/timezone-
       | boundary-builder !
        
         | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
         | It's a great project. If you are involved, you have my thanks
         | (also, the thanks of a lot of people that have no idea it
         | exists).
        
       | kevmo314 wrote:
       | Since the geojson for the timezone data is a static file you can
       | avoid using a database entirely and ship it to your app.
       | 
       | If you'd like to avoid shipping a giant geojson, with the
       | generosity of CDN providers you can actually hit the npm-hosting
       | servers with HTTP Range requests and do this completely on demand
       | from the client: https://github.com/kevmo314/browser-geo-tz
        
         | edoceo wrote:
         | How should we get right bits by range? Wouldn't we get chunks
         | of JSON that aren't delimited nicely?
        
       | akhenakh wrote:
       | Look at this library embedding the TZ data, implemented in
       | multiple languages, even providing an HTTP server
       | https://github.com/ringsaturn/tzf
        
       | SahAssar wrote:
       | I'm guessing this does not try to handle things like terra
       | nullius (Bir Tawil, Marie Byrd Land, etc.) or where there might
       | not be a "correct" answer over which timezone is in a place (like
       | https://www.972mag.com/the-worlds-only-ethnic-time-zone/)?
        
         | ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
         | It just uses the map that was generated by the TimeZone
         | Boundary Builder[0]. It does fine for my purposes.
         | 
         | I just figured it might be useful. One reason that I wrote it,
         | was because I couldn't find a decent SaaS that didn't charge
         | eye-watering prices, for a fairly slow response. I wrote it in
         | an afternoon or two. Not really an ambitious project.
         | 
         | I don't usually do "Show HN." Not interested in competing with
         | anyone. If you like it, use it. If you don't like it, don't use
         | it. If there are clear bugs, I'm always open to feedback.
         | 
         | [0] https://github.com/evansiroky/timezone-boundary-builder
        
       | OsrsNeedsf2P wrote:
       | I recently had this issue with an Android app I made, it was
       | surprisingly difficult to resolve. I ended up going with some
       | OpenStreetMap mirror endpoint for my solution
        
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       (page generated 2025-05-20 23:00 UTC)