Times with Unix/PHP

Shock_CNOP

I must first admit that I have little experience in dealing with times, and I'm not sure where to begin.

I have recorded a timestamp of the current time, but when I echo this time, it reads five hours ahead of the current timezone I'm in (which is -6 hours GMT and the server is -8 GMT). I first assumed that this time was GMT -1, but then I began thinking about daylight savings time and what not, and that just got me even more confused. Can anyone point me to a good article about dealing with time, or maybe give me a quick rundown of what I need to do to make the time display correctly for my current timezone (whether it's DST or not)?

Thanks in advance.

devinemke

if you and your server are in different timezones then you must offset the server time by the number of seconds. for example: i live in New York City. my server is in Los Angeles. therefore when i wish to display my current time i do:

echo date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time() + 10800);

10800 is the number of seconds in 3 hours (the time diff between NY and LA). if both you and your server's timezones use DST then there is nothing more you need do. if not then you make have to tweak the offset by 1 hour during DST.

Weedpacket

devinemke wrote:
if both you and your server's timezones use DST then there is nothing more you need do. if not then you make have to tweak the offset by 1 hour during DST.

This of course is assuming that both you and the server use the same definition of DST.