Converting between timezones in PHP

Question

I am converting this time and date:

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:05:59 GMT

To the following time and date format:

Monday March 28 2011 4:48:02 PM

I am using the following PHP code to accomplish this, but I want to convert all time zones to PST/PDT. I looked at the PHP manual and saw this date_default_timezone_set() but I am not sure how to implement that into the code I have below.

$date = $messages[0]->CreationTime;
echo date('l F j Y g:i:s A I', strtotime($date))

score 98 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 07 '15 at 12:49

98

I would not use date_default_timezone_set for general TZ conversions. (To clarify... if this is for display purposes, script wide, then using the default timezone is a reasonable thing to do.)

Instead, I would use something like:

$tz = new DateTimeZone('America/Los_Angeles');

$date = new DateTime('Thu, 31 Mar 2011 02:05:59 GMT');
$date->setTimezone($tz);
echo $date->format('l F j Y g:i:s A I')."\n";

edited Apr 07 '15 at 12:49

Kalzem

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answered Mar 31 '11 at 16:35

Matthew

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Correct, using date_default_timezone_set will change the time zone of the whole app. – Edmunds22 Jan 18 '21 at 15:05

score 2 · Answer 2 · answered Mar 31 '11 at 16:29

2

$date = $messages[0]->CreationTime;
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');
echo date('l F j Y g:i:s A I', strtotime($date));

See this list for available timezones that get passed into the function

answered Mar 31 '11 at 16:29

Mike B

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Here's a list of the supported arguments into date_default_timezone_set: http://www.php.net/manual/en/timezones.php – Zach Rattner Mar 31 '11 at 16:31
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changing your default timezone is a bad idea. you should really do that sort of thing in your php.ini file. if you change the default timezone, other dates could be affected when you arent expecting it. – Brent Larsen Nov 16 '15 at 19:25
@BrentLarsen Time zones should be per application not globally on the server. – Mike B Nov 18 '15 at 03:13

Converting between timezones in PHP

2 Answers2

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