Dealing with timezones?

[pieter1970]

Hello all,

I've got a little script which is used by people arround the world. It displays a list of items, a item as a date/time stamp. So when someone adds a item on 3 may 2004 15:30, "3 may 2004 15:30" is displayed with the item.

The server time is used te determine the time. I own the server so i can configure it the way i want.

But now imagine someone from mexico adds a new item, the item get time "3 may 2004 15:30" (the server time). But the mexican guy looks strange and saids "he! that's stupid, it's nowhere near 15:30 over here, you little clock is wrong, stupid script!!11"

Now i can let the mexican guy choose the timezone he's in. For example -3 hours CET. So i do:

$hour=((60*60));
$itemtime=getItemTime()-($hour*3)
print date('someformat', $itemtime);

I'm wondering if this is the best way to do it, or are there other standard ways of doing it?

Thanks.
🙂

[Installer]

You could also do this:

print date('someformat', strtotime('-3 hours'));

[AvisSoft]

Hi,

I think your code is not yeilding the correct result.

Thanks.

[Weedpacket]

I think it would be simpler just to make it clear which timezone is being used on the server. Most people who are intelligent enough to post are intelligent enough to realise that it might be a different time in another part of the world.

You would want to use the same timezone for all times displayed - otherwise a post at 15:30 might be followed by one at 12:30 the same day. And that would just look silly.

[AvisSoft]

Hi,

I am not dealing with posts so it does'nt matters me. But i figured it out and its very simple ...no matter what timezone you are in...you can use gmdate function to get Greenwhich mean time. Then you have to calculate the difference + or - to the GMT time you got.

And here's how i got it to work:

echo "GMT Difference: " . date (O) . "<br>\n";
echo "Current Server Time: " . date("M d Y H:i:s A", strtotime ("now")) . "<br>";
echo "Current UK Time: " . gmdate("M d Y H:i:s A", mktime (date(h) + 1, date(i), date(s), date(n), date(j), date(Y)));

Thats it.

Thanks.

[Weedpacket]

date('O') - why didn't I think of that? :o

Um, just note that UTC as returned by gmdate() isn't necessarily UK time; right now, for instance, UK time is one hour ahead of UTC, because it's summer there.

[AvisSoft]

Hi,

Um, just note that UTC as returned by gmdate() isn't necessarily UK time; right now, for instance, UK time is one hour ahead of UTC, because it's summer there.

If you note my code properly...i have added that:

mktime (date(h) + 1, date(i),...

Thanks.

[AvisSoft]

Hi,

But anyways the new version should give you perfect UK time.

<?php
echo "GMT Difference: " . date (O) . "<br>\n";
echo "Current Server Time: " . date("M d Y H:i:s A", strtotime ("now")) . "<br>";

if (date(j) > 4 || date(j) < 10)
{
        echo "Current UK Time: " . gmdate("M d Y H:i:s A", mktime (date(h) + 1, date(i), date(s), date(n), date(j), date(Y)));
}
else
{
        echo "Current UK Time: " . gmdate("M d Y H:i:s A", mktime (date(h), date(i), date(s), date(n), date(j), date(Y)));
}
?>

Hope it helps all.

Thanks.

[Weedpacket]

Ah, so you're not going to go back every six months to change the source code 🙂

I should also have pointed out that you should be writing

date('O')

and not

date(O)

for reasons noted in the manual under [man]Constants[/man] (the section on Syntax).

[AvisSoft]

Hi,

okay thanks. I will remember that.

thanks.