date()'s wrong.

[yinrunning]

Ok, so I'm using

echo date ("r");

and it's returning the time an hour late. ??? Is that set wrong on the server? And if so.... umm.... no idea how to go about fixing that. email them I guess? I mean, I guess I could learn to parse nist.gov output, but that seems like alot of trouble for something so small. Since I don't have another box to check with, could someone click my site link below and tell me if the time in the nav bar is late for them also? thx.

[drew010]

the time returned by all the date functions is the time that the server is set to. they probably have it setup in their own time zone. you can use [man]strtotime[/man] to adjust it as needed to your own time zone. use echo date("r", strtotime('PST')); replace PST with your own time zone that you want it to show and it will show what you want.

[toplay]

drew010 is correct of course, but if your web host provider is in the same timezone as you, then ask them to change it.

If you're on a Unix based system, you can take advantage of the TZ environment variable. As, in:

$tz = getenv('TZ');  // Get current server time zone setting
echo "Current timezone setting: $tz <br>";
putenv("TZ=EST5EDT"); // Change to US Eastern time zone or whatever you want
$lt = localtime(time(), TRUE);
echo "EST local time: $lt['tm_hour']:$lt['tm_min']:$lt['tm_sec'] <br>";
putenv("TZ=$tz"); // Change it back to the original server time zone

The above code is an example where you don't have to worry about the offsets from UTC of different time zones, or whether DST is in effect. Just set the appropriate zone and let your system/server do the rest. It fools the system into thinking it's in a different time zone, long enough for you to get the time in the zone you want.

If you're not on Unix based system, then you could use an associative array that contains offsets from UTC. Here is an example to get a Pacific time:

$tz = array (
                   'AST' => -4      // Atlantic Standard
                   'CST' => -6,     // Central Standard
                   'EST' => -5,     // Eastern Standard
                   'PST' => -8,     // Pacific Standard
                   'HST' => -10,   // Hawaii Standard
                    // etc. etc. etc. - Just put as many as you need here
                   'NZT' => +12   // New Zealand Standard
             );

$pacific_time = time() + ($tz['PST'] * 3600);

echo gmstrftime('%c', $pacific_time);

The 'TZ' environment variable should take care of DST automatically. But, here's another way to handle DST:

$tz = array (
                   'AST' => -4 // Atlantic Standard
                   'CST' => -6, // Central Standard
                   'EST' => -5, // Eastern Standard
                   'PST' => -8, // Pacific Standard
                   'HST' => -10, // Hawaii Standard
                   // etc. etc. etc. - Just put as many as you need here
                   'NZT' => +12 // New Zealand Standard
                 );

$pacific_time = time() + ($tz['PST'] * 3600);

$lt = localtime($pacific_time, TRUE);

if ($lt['tm_isdst'])
    $pacific_time += 3600;

echo gmstrftime('%c', $pacific_time);

Various helpful links:-

getenv -- Gets the value of an environment variable:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.getenv.php

putenv -- Sets the value of an environment variable:
http://us2.php.net/manual/en/function.putenv.php

US time zones:
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/zones.html

World time zones:
http://tycho.usno.navy.mil/tzones.html

Time Zone and Daylight Saving Time Data:
http://www.twinsun.com/tz/tz-link.htm

localtime -- Get the local time:
http://us2.php.net/localtime

date -- Format a local time/date (which accepts Timezone offset in seconds):
http://us3.php.net/date

strftime -- Format a local time/date according to locale settings:
http://us3.php.net/strftime/

gmstrftime -- Format a GMT/UTC time/date according to locale settings:
http://us3.php.net/manual/en/function.gmstrftime.php

hth.

🙂

[yinrunning]

so that would be server time regardless of anything. localtime dynamically in one shot... might as well use Javascript? I don't see anything that will format it based on browser (i.e. - client) time. Hmm.... now, when I have my user system set up, I can use their TZ offset out of a db entry, but for now I guess php isn't really going to do it, is it?

Thoughts?

[toplay]

yinrunning wrote:

so that would be server time regardless of anything. localtime dynamically in one shot... might as well use Javascript? I don't see anything that will format it based on browser (i.e. - client) time. Hmm.... now, when I have my user system set up, I can use their TZ offset out of a db entry, but for now I guess php isn't really going to do it, is it?

Thoughts?

I don't know what you're trying to do, so it's hard to comment on your last post.

What I want to share is, that nobody really would use the client side time because a persons computer could be set to anything they want. Maybe users like their time 10 minutes ahead or half hour ahead so they won't be late to something. Some may have it accidentally set a day early, late or not at all.

Always use the server time because it is the only constant thing you can rely on. This forum saves everything using the server time, but you have an option under control panel -> Edit Options to change it to have the forum display the date and time in your timezone.

hth.

[yinrunning]

Right. That's what I was saying about "when I have a user system", which won't be too long from now. Just have to do some research first. I'm experimenting with ways of combining ColdFusion and PHP, really just on an http-request level, but noone seems to have done much of that out there. Anyway!

If you look on my main page (see sig. below), it's just a "this is the time" thingy. Farily useless. I just like having it there for some reason. However, without user tracking, there's no quick-and-dirty way to do it in PHP that I can think of. JavaScript seems like my only option, and way quicker at that.