Using Date time diff with timezones

Question

I found a link earlier regarding using time diffs and getting the difference in minutes, hours and days: How to get time difference in minutes in PHP

I was trying this:

    $date1 = new DateTime('first day of this month', new DateTimeZone('Europe/Amsterdam'));
    $date2 = new DateTime('first day of this month', new DateTimeZone('Europe/London'));

    print_r($date1->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'));
    print_r($date2->format('Y-m-d H:i:s'));

The output was like:

    2013-12-01 13:00:36
    2013-12-01 12:00:36

Then used this:

    $diff = $date2->diff($date1);
    print_r($diff);

But then i get 0 in all the differences. I want to get the difference between the two without using strtotime.. I is it outputing 0?

score 3 · Accepted Answer · answered Dec 23 '13 at 12:09

3

Your expectation doesn't make sense, since there is no difference. 2013-12-01 13:00:36 Amsterdam and 2013-12-01 12:00:36 London are the exact same point in time in human history. What you appear to expect is the offset difference between the London and Amsterdam timezones (i.e. GMT and GMT+1 differ by 1), but that has nothing to do with concrete timestamps.

answered Dec 23 '13 at 12:09

deceze

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Oh.. Yes.. I actually want to get the time offset .. But how do i get the difference between to timezones i have just declared and convert to minutes? – Jane Deuschandell Dec 23 '13 at 12:11
Just have a look at the DateTimeZone class documentation in the manual. – deceze Dec 23 '13 at 12:16

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Dec 23 '13 at 12:16

You want to calculate the offset.Use DateTimeZone::getOffset()

$dateTimeZoneAmsterdam = new DateTimeZone("Europe/Amsterdam");
$dateTimeZoneLondon = new DateTimeZone("Europe/London");


$dateTimeAmsterdam = new DateTime('first day of this month', $dateTimeZoneAmsterdam);
$dateTimeLondon = new DateTime('first day of this month', $dateTimeZoneLondon);


$timeOffset = $dateTimeZoneAmsterdam->getOffset($dateTimeLondon);

print_r($timeOffset); // 3600

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Dec 23 '13 at 12:19

0

You are close. Try DateTime::diff

answered Dec 23 '13 at 12:19

Elliptical view

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Using Date time diff with timezones

3 Answers3