Allow setting timezone for pubDate with @astrojs/rss?

[mk6f33]

Body

Summary

Right now, the published dates get automatically transformed to GMT even when the date string is in a different timezone.

Background & Motivation

My original date that I set in the frontmatter

---
title: "My first blog"
date: "2025-10-28T07:38:18+09:00"
---

The generated RSS feed's pubDate gets transformed to GMT timezone with yesterday's date, which is accurate but i would like my dates in same timezone to avoid confusion.

<item>
  <title>My first blog</title>
  <link>http://localhost:4321/blog/my-first-blog</link>
  <guid isPermaLink="true">http://localhost:4321/blog/my-first-blog</guid>
  <pubDate>Mon, 27 Oct 2025 22:38:18 GMT</pubDate>
</item>

Goals

• Allow setting timezone for the generated published dates either through
  • astro config
  • or just infer timezone from the date string

[delucis]

The pubDate option currently accepts a JavaScript Date object which are always in “local” time (to wherever the code is running), so I don’t think it can be inferred from that.

Under the hood, Astro converts that to a string using .toUTCString().

So if you wanted time zone support, a configuration option passed to the RSS integration would probably be the way to go.

It’s a pretty small change, so we would probably accept a PR if someone wants to make one.

[mk6f33]

Understandable, you mean like adding something like this to RSSOptions?

export type RSSOptions = {
	/** Title of the RSS Feed */
	title: z.infer<typeof rssOptionsValidator>['title'];
	...
	trailingSlash?: z.infer<typeof rssOptionsValidator>['trailingSlash'];
+	timezone?: z.infer<typeof rssOptionsValidator>['timezone'];
};

[delucis]

Yeah. It would be a bit more than just that, to wire it up, but something in that direction.