How Can I Globally Set the Time Zone in a Go Application?

Setting Time Zone Globally in Go

In Go, setting the time zone globally is typically achieved by either modifying the TZ environment variable or initializing it using the time.LoadLocation() function. While modifying the TZ environment works as expected, it becomes problematic when the time zone needs to be set programmatically within the application.

To overcome this, one can create a custom package that sets the time zone before any other package imports the time package. By placing this custom package as the first import in the main package, we ensure that the time zone is initialized with the desired value before other packages use it.

Here's an example of such a package:

package tzinit

import (
    "os"
)

func init() {
    os.Setenv("TZ", "Africa/Cairo")
}

To use this package, import it first in the main package, like so:

package main

import _ "path/to/tzinit"

import (
    "fmt"
    "os"
    "time"
)

func main() {
    // ...
}

By using this approach, we can set the time zone globally within the application, ensuring consistency across all packages that import the time package.

It's important to note that while the Go specification recommends processing multiple files in lexical file name order, relying solely on this behavior is not recommended. Setting the TZ environment variable before launching the Go application remains the most reliable way to ensure that the time zone is initialized as intended.

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