date_format Django 1.4 with correct timezone - django

Question

Okay simple question (I think).
I have a DateTime field (auto_add_now) and when output to a template
{{ edited|date:"DATETIME_FORMAT" }}
I get the expected result of "Sept. 16, 2012, 12:01 p.m."
But unfortunately things are slightly more complicated since I am using Backbone.js and need to pass the datetime with JSON, and since it is only used for display purposes I decided to pass it as a nice locale formatted string. So I dug into the code and found what the template tag uses and this is what I setup.
from django.utils.formats import date_format
return {
'created': date_format(self.created, 'DATETIME_FORMAT'),
}
But that ends up with this "Sept. 16, 2012, 5:01 p.m."
I have a feeling it has to do with the following on the template tag
#register.filter(expects_localtime=True, is_safe=False)
I also tried this but ended up with the same results
from django.utils import timezone
tz = timezone.get_current_timezone()
logger.info(tz)
logger.info(self.edited)
logger.info(format(self.edited, 'DATETIME_FORMAT'))
logger.info(self.edited.replace(tzinfo=tz))
logger.info(format(self.edited.replace(tzinfo=tz), 'DATETIME_FORMAT'))
Which gave me this
INFO: America/Chicago
INFO: 2012-09-16 17:01:52.921276+00:00
INFO: Sept. 16, 2012, 5:01 p.m.
INFO: 2012-09-16 17:01:52.921276-06:00
INFO: Sept. 16, 2012, 5:01 p.m.
So yeah, I must be missing something, and I have been up and down the django documentation and cannot find anything that could point me to what I am doing wrong. Thanks for any help.

Answer 1

I figured it out. And sadly it was in the Django Timezones documentation that I thought I had exhausted. Localize Usage timezone.localtime()
from django.utils.formats import date_format
from django.utils import timezone
date_format(timezone.localtime(page.created), 'DATETIME_FORMAT')

Answer 2

Maybe the following will help you.
>>> obj = MyModel.objects.get(...)
>>> data = {"date_format": obj.edited}
>>> from django.core.serializers.json import DjangoJSONEncoder
>>> data = json.dumps(data, cls=DjangoJSONEncoder)
>>> data
'{"date_format": "2012-09-16T21:45:46Z"}'
Send the json formatted data from your view:
E.g return HttpResponse(data, mimetype='application/json').
And then at your client side code you can convert the date_format to the local timezone with:
(Assuming response is the JSON parsed object)
var d = new Date(Date.parse(response.date_format));
// Sun Sep 16 2012 22:45:46 GMT+0100 (BST)