How can I simply change the Timezone Offset with Zend_Date?

Question

I'm using Zend_Date to manage dates/times in a scheduling app.

The only way I'm able to determine the user's Timezone is via Javascript which only gives a Timezone Offset. Zend_Date only seems to take Timezones in the 'America/New_York' format.

Is there a way to get the users timezone in this format or set the Timezone Offset with Zend_Date?

Thanks!

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered May 15 '10 at 05:43

2

Nicky,

You don't really need Zend_Date for this as the PHP intrinsic DateTime and DateTimeZone objects work well for this; however, I can point you in the right direction if you really need to use Zend_Date.

See the following examples

$date = new Zend_Date(1234567890, false, $locale);
$date->toString... (see: http://framework.zend.com/manual/en/zend.date.constants.html for more details)
Use the following Constants for ISO 8601: (Z = Difference of time zone [+0100])

This should get you to where you need to be. Please post code samples if you get stuck.

answered May 15 '10 at 05:43

Wil Moore III

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BTW, better practice is to allow the user to select their timezone from a list which you store. If you want to make it easier for the user, you could present a list of guesses first. The following could help with this: The static methos "DateTimeZone::listAbbreviations()" will return a list of timezone abbreviations which also includes the offset (offset from UTC/GMT). Use your result from Javascript to search this array for a lsit of possible timezones. There will likely be dupes so present the dupes to the user and let them choose. – Wil Moore III May 15 '10 at 05:53

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered May 15 '10 at 16:59

1

You could use the timezone_name_from_abbr function:

$javascript_offset = '-1';
$zone = timezone_name_from_abbr('', $javascript_offset * 3600, 0);

You will also need to consider DST. Have a look at this example for more info.

answered May 15 '10 at 16:59

cmbuckley

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score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 08 '10 at 05:22

You can use javascript to set a cookie to the users timezone offset.

Then in php you can have an array indexed by offset

$timezones = array (

    '-1' => 'adfas/adsfafsd',
    '-2' => 'adsfasdf/asdfasdf'
    ...
);

$date->setTimezone( $timezones[$_COOKIE['tz_offset']] );

How can I simply change the Timezone Offset with Zend_Date?

3 Answers3