Timestamps persisted incorrectly to Postgres despite DB timezone is set to UTC

[gabriellbui]

Describe the bug
This is basically a duplicate of typeorm/typeorm#9627. It's mainly here to track the timestamp issue within Vendure as well.

In TypeORM columns with timestamp or timestamp without time zone type is read as local date, not UTC.

This happens with automatically created values as well (e.g., @CreateDateColumn()). In Vendure, the base VendureEntity applies the default @CreateDateColumn() to createdAt and @UpdateDateColumn() to updatedAt, causing them to persist with incorrect timestamps.

To Reproduce
Follow the "To Reproduce" section in this issue: TypeORM Issue #9627

Expected behavior
Entities extending the base VendureEntity should have the correct createdAt and updatedAt timestamps

Environment (please complete the following information):

Dependency	Version
Operating System	macOS sequoia 15.3.1
Node.js version	22.14.0
Typescript version	5.2.2
TypeORM version	0.3.20
PostgreSQL version	15.4

Related issues
typeorm/typeorm#9627
typeorm/typeorm#2220
typeorm/typeorm#8296
typeorm/typeorm#5841
typeorm/typeorm#7184
#1375

Suggested solution
Use the timestamptz type which is an abbreviation for type timestamp with time zone. It should internally store them in UTC, but converted to the session's time zone when queried.

  @CreateDateColumn({ type: "timestamptz" })
  createdAt: Date;

  @UpdateDateColumn({ type: 'timestamptz' })
  updatedAt: Date;

An alternative is to configure the driver to interpret timestamps as UTC inside your project

pg.defaults.parseInputDatesAsUTC = true

const dateParser = pg.types.getTypeParser(pg.types.builtins.TIMESTAMP)
pg.types.setTypeParser(pg.types.builtins.TIMESTAMP, (val: string) =>
  dateParser(`${val}Z`),
)