Get local UTC time from HTML sbmitted time

Question

I have a HTML form which has a date and time field. I assume that when a user enters a date/time, they are doing so in their local time, but when I store it in the database, I need it in UTC, and then when displaying it I need to adjust it to the viewers time.
Can I know the clients timezone from the server (I am using PHP and Apache, but may use IIS in the future, so would rather not rely on Apache-only behavior if possible)? Or can I do UTC <-> Local conversions on the client in Javascript?

Example: A user in UTC+1 timezone submits 2012-10-18 01:30. This should get stored as the timestamp of 2012-10-18 00:30:00 (whatever that is). Then, if a client at UTC-5 with local DST views the record, they should see 2012-10-17 20:30.

See: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/10834665/how-can-i-handle-time-zones-in-my-webapp — Christophe Roussy, Oct 23 '13 at 12:17

score 1 · Accepted Answer · answered Oct 18 '12 at 07:47

1

<html>
<head>
<script>
function test()
{
    var d = new Date(2012, 6, 13, 12, 0, 0, 0);
    console.log(d);
    var hours = d.getUTCHours();
    console.log(hours);
}
</script>
</head>
<body>
<input type="button" onclick="test()" value="test"/>
</body>
</html>

You input d as local time, and get UTC time by using getUTCHours(), getUTCDates(), etc... Then send UTC time back to server.

answered Oct 18 '12 at 07:47

Li-chih Wu

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I wasn't aware of these UTC functions. I checked them out and the one I actually want is `d.getTime()/1000`. – Baruch Oct 18 '12 at 08:14

Get local UTC time from HTML sbmitted time

1 Answers1