Users Timezone

CMellor · 09-26-2007, 01:22 AM

Hey, hope all are well. I have a question.

My project is pretty big, and can only hope for global success. Currently all the times on the website are using the server's clock, which is 6 hours behind my clock (It's in the USA and I'm in the UK). I will allow my users to set there timezone via a select menu, the same as a lot of forums (including this one) use in it's control panel. I'll be storing the value in the 'member' table.

What I'm not 100% sure on is how to use the value to display the time in their timezone. My timezone would be '0 - GMT' but with the server time been six hours behind my clock, would I add '+6' instead? When I output a time, I want it to be the time in their timezone, so, my first though was to do something like this:

Code:

echo date('D M, Y' time()+$row->timezone);

If anyone has any discussions on this, I look forward to hearing them :)

P.S. Hope I made sense :P

Wildhoney · 09-26-2007, 10:14 AM

I'd go one of two, maybe three ways at a push, in achieving this.

Method 1: Using strtotime()
Downsides: Not the fastest function in the world but gets the job done.

PHP Code:


			
echo date('H:i:s D M, Y', strtotime('+6 hours'));

Method 2: Using mktime()
Downsides: Long line. Uses functions inside functions which can look exceptionally messy.

PHP Code:


			
echo date('H:i:s D M, Y', mktime(date('H') + 6, date('m'), date('Y'), date('m'), date('d'), date('y')));

Method 3: The proper way! Using date_default_timezone_set or putenv
Downsides: Very little! Just wish this function was more heard of.

PHP Code:


			
putenv('TZ=US/Eastern'); // Using putenv. Good for pre PHP5.
echo date('H:i:s D M, Y');

PHP Code:


			
date_default_timezone_set('US/Eastern'); // How to do it now we have PHP5
echo date('H:i:s D M, Y');

CMellor · 09-26-2007, 11:12 PM

While date_default_timezone_set looks tempting, I can't see how it would work with the values of the select menu, which will be '0, +1, +2... -2, -1' etc. Unless those values would work with the $timezone_identifier, but I see no mention of that in the manual. I think I may just go with strtotime()

Unless anyone has any follow up's to my query, thanks for the help Wild Honey.