I'm currently working on the backend for a calendaring system that returns naive Python datetimes. The way the front end works is the user creates various calendar events, and the frontend returns the naive version of the event they created (for example, if the user selects October 5, 2020 from 3:00pm-4:00pm, the frontend returns datetime.datetime(2020, 10, 5, 15, 0, 0) as the start and datetime.datetime(2011, 10, 5, 16, 0, 0) as the end.

What I need to do is to take the naive datetime and convert it into UTC for storage in a database. Each user of the system has already specified their timezone preference, so the naive datetime is considered to be of the same timezone as their timezone preference. Obviously the datetimes need to be stored relative to UTC so that if users change their timezone, existing events will still render at the correct time that they scheduled them.

The frontend is outside my control, so I can't change the data that I'm receiving. The database design is also outside my control, so I can't change what data is being stored and how.

Here is the approximate approach I have taken so far:

import pytz
def convert_to_UTC(naive_datetime, user_tz_preference):
    user_datetime = naive_datetime.replace(tzinfo=user_tz_preference)
    utc_datetime = user_datetime.astimezone(pytz.utc)

The problem I ran into is related to Daylight Savings Time:

>>> from datetime import datetime
>>> import pytz
>>> user_tz_preference = pytz.timezone('US/Pacific')
>>> naive_datetime = datetime(2011, 10, 26, 12, 0, 0)
>>> user_datetime = naive_datetime.replace(tzinfo=user_tz_preference)
>>> user_datetime
datetime.datetime(2011, 10, 26, 12, 0, tzinfo=<DstTzInfo 'US/Pacific' PST-1 day, 16:00:00 STD>)
>>> received_utc = user_datetime.astimezone(pytz.utc)
>>> received_utc
datetime.datetime(2011, 10, 26, 2
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