Help needed with custom function: error: Invalid time zone specified: undefined

Troubleshooting
1

I struggle with custom functions for date/time I need for some more advanced date/time operations within my data… I created year.md within my /Library/Personal/ and wrote:

---
description: Get current year
tags:
  - meta
---

```space-script
silverbullet.registerFunction({name: 'year'}, () => {
  return Temporal.Now.plainDateISO().year;
})
```

I am not JS fun and never wrote anything in it but it looks quite sane to me. So, if I try it somewhere:

```template
{{year}}
```

I get:

Error rendering template Error: Invalid time zone specified: undefined
    at data:application/javascript;base64,dmFyIHFlPU9iamVjdC5k......e09vIGFzIHBsdWd9Owo=:1:940
    at data:application/javascript;base64,dmFyIHFlPU9iamVjdC5k......e09vIGFzIHBsdWd9Owo=:1:988
    at innerInvokeEventListeners (ext:deno_web/02_event.js:754:7)
    at invokeEventListeners (ext:deno_web/02_event.js:801:5)
    at dispatch (ext:deno_web/02_event.js:658:9)
    at dispatchEvent (ext:deno_web/02_event.js:1043:12)
    at pollForMessages (ext:runtime_main/js/99_main.js:311:7)
    at eventLoopTick (ext:core/01_core.js:175:7)
An exception was thrown as a result of invoking function renderTemplate error: Invalid time zone specified: undefined

What am I doing wrong, please? How to specify the time zone and can the time zone be set globally? I am going to write many date/time related functions and will, of course, share them. But I am stuck with this.

2

I’m not sure how to solve your issue as I am not an expert either. But ChatGPT is great at solving syntax and similar issues like this.

3

@bent0n If it was syntax issue I wouldn’t had asked. :slight_smile: But this doesn’t look like syntax issue. The function does not know what time zone it should use, I guess, so I had to pass it somehow. This exact snippet was taken from this forum from here. Perhaps I’m blind but both looks the same…

4

I know, but surely ChatGPT can help tell you how to set the timezone.

But it seems to work in the post you linked. So maybe an issue in your system not having the timezone set?

5

@bent0n OK, will try later. But that still would not explain why the linked version works for him, meaning that something must differ somewhere. And that would be SB-specific and I doubt any LLM would find it’s path to a correct answer. How to setup timezone globally, for all functions that may request it? Is it possible?

6

The snippet work on my instance. So I assume some settings missing on your side. How are you running SB? Docker?

7

My workstation:

# timedatectl
               Local time: Fri 2024-10-11 16:12:20 CEST
           Universal time: Fri 2024-10-11 14:12:20 UTC
                 RTC time: Fri 2024-10-11 14:12:20
                Time zone: Europe/Prague (CEST, +0200)
System clock synchronized: yes
              NTP service: active
          RTC in local TZ: no

What’s unique but perfectly valid is my user’s TZ variable set to

$ echo $TZ
:/etc/localtime

I will try to set it to Europe/Prague and restart SB and we will see.

8

So you have sb running directly not in a container?

9

Yes, under my normal user. It’s not exposed anywhere.

10

Yeah, it was the TZ variable! I set it to Europe/Prague, restarted SB and everything works now. Deno or something obviously does not use standard libraries or something. Solved. @bent0n Thanks for your effort! :+1: