date_default_timezone_set() seems to have no effect

Question

I was trying to get the time() on a PHP page (localhost), but it seemed it was returning wrong dates. So I tried:

date_default_timezone_set("America/Chicago");
echo "America/Chicago:".time();
echo "<br>";

date_default_timezone_set("Europe/Helsinki");
echo "Europe/Helsinki:".time();

Which outputs:

America/Chicago:1439981623
Europe/Helsinki:1439981623

How is it that these two values are the same? How can I make sure this particular php-page returns times in my timezone, without changing the php.ini file?

See the answer to [that](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/11125568/converting-a-timestamp-into-multiple-timezones) questions, it may help you. — al'ein, Aug 19 '15 at 11:01
Thanks for that. I still wonder why it doesn't work though. It seems like `date_default_timezone_set` has no influence at all, even if I only use it once. — binoculars, Aug 19 '15 at 11:14

al'ein · Accepted Answer · 2015-08-19T11:25:28.080

1

As stated at php.net documentation's first highly voted contribution note by "Timo K":

The function time() returns always timestamp that is timezone independent (=UTC).

That said, you must use DateTime objects and it's methods to deal with multiple timezones.

edited Aug 19 '15 at 11:25

answered Aug 19 '15 at 11:19

al'ein

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date_default_timezone_set() seems to have no effect

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