Convert UTC dates to local time in PHP

Question

I'm storing the UTC dates into the DB using:

$utc = gmdate("M d Y h:i:s A");

and then I want to convert the saved UTC date to the client's local time.

How can I do that?

Thanks

Answer 1

Given a local timezone, such as 'America/Denver', you can use DateTime class to convert UTC timestamp to the local date:

$timestamp = *********;
$date = new DateTime("@" . $timestamp);
$date->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/Denver'));
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Answer 2

Date arithmetic is not needed if you just want to display the same timestamp in different timezones:

$format = "M d, Y h:ia";
$timestamp = gmdate($format);

date_default_timezone_set("UTC");
$utc_datetime = date($format, $timestamp);

date_default_timezone_set("America/Guayaquil");
$local_datetime = date($format, $timestamp);

Answer 3

I store date in the DB in UTC format but then I show them to the final user in their local timezone

// retrieve
$d = (new \DateTime($val . ' UTC'))->format('U');
return date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $d);

Answer 4

Answer

Convert the UTC datetime to America/Denver

// create a $dt object with the UTC timezone
$dt = new DateTime('2016-12-12 12:12:12', new DateTimeZone('UTC'));

// change the timezone of the object without changing it's time
$dt->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('America/Denver'));

// format the datetime
$dt->format('Y-m-d H:i:s T');

Notes

time() returns the unix timestamp, which is a number, it has no timezone.

date('Y-m-d H:i:s T') returns the date in the current locale timezone.

gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s T') returns the date in UTC

date_default_timezone_set() changes the current locale timezone

to change a time in a timezone

// create a $dt object with the America/Denver timezone
$dt = new DateTime('2016-12-12 12:12:12', new DateTimeZone('America/Denver'));

// change the timezone of the object without changing it's time
$dt->setTimezone(new DateTimeZone('UTC'));

// format the datetime
$dt->format('Y-m-d H:i:s T');

here you can see all the available timezones

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_tz_database_time_zones

here are all the formatting options

http://php.net/manual/en/function.date.php

Update PHP timezone DB (in linux)

sudo pecl install timezonedb