Use PHP and JavaScript to Display Local Time

Sorry, why not you state clearly that which code needs to place and on where? Don't grab your tutorial much sense. Cause...I'm a newbie :)

Where's the full code???????? Don't break it up, its confusing!

The code is available as a whole for viewing.

Hmmm, it doesn't seem to work for me. I tried putting the example in a gmt.php file, ran it, but when run it shows a blank page? Your tutorial is a little hard to understand.

Is this method actually a reliable method? Couldn't you simply store the offset as a cookie? I'm interesting in this but I believe it would be easier to give the user a dropdown with all timezone offsets.

Humpy, it isn't supposed to output anything. Just include it from a different page.

Hal, it probably is a good idea to store it as a cookie - I am storing it for registered users in my database.

As for the dropdown menu with all timezones - it probably is a better idea to have a field where people can type in the offset. As far as I know not many people would actually do it, but most know how to follow a link.

I can't believe all the grumpy comments. I think this page is exceedingly well-done and a useful tip. Keep it up Martin!

Tom

I agree, this page is well done, but why the need for PHP in this instance, since Javascript has enough functions to display the user's local time in many different ways already.

Well the most obvious reason is that you can't get your content from a database, etc. and you won't have so many dates to deal with if only using JavaScript.

Anyway it is a good suggestion for static sites that show dates.

I didn't try this, but I tried displaying my local time (only my local time) by adding the offset (+13 from f2o), and it didn't work because of other considerations. Suppose Singapore was one day ahead of f2o. One month. One year. Leap year. It's all possible.

My solution was slightly different. I used mktime to obtain the number of seconds since the UNIX epoch (1/1/1970) in server time, added the offset in seconds, then used the value returned by mktime as an argument in date(). This can be adapted for this script as well.

Why do you use the server local time at all? You can always get the UTC time with PHP and then add the offset, which is usually within the range -12 to +12 hours.

sir:

how would i send the exact time zone of a user and send it to flash or php..

thanks..

kindly email me the answer..

francis

please bear with me... i am new to php but very interested to learn. how do i go about using this code to display the current date on the page.

To display dates in the users' localtime:

1 Include the file (localtime.php)

2 Use the format_datetime() function (the parameter is a Unix timestamp)

PS. And read the article.

I'm sure this is a great solution but this article is so diificult to read the viewer cannot follow how to use it.

sometimes explanations are above the code block sometimes they are below...

the "download" is also not working or is it explained somewhere else ?

please help possibly provide a working example ?

<?

$time = date("H:i");

print "$time";

?>

If i just want the date to be UK time how can i alter the code i have atm (above) to make it 'just' GMT?

what is the expected format of $date as input to function

maybe that is why nothing is working for me

Hi,

I wondered if you can explain how the above file could be used. I am a newbie. I get error message which is not understanding to me.

I tried to include the file above and call the date function but it was not working. This is the error message I got:

Warning: Cannot send session cookie - headers already sent by (output started at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\databases\localtime.inc:20) in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\databases\localtime.inc on line 22

Warning: Cannot send session cache limiter - headers already sent (output started at c:\inetpub\wwwroot\databases\localtime.inc:20) in c:\inetpub\wwwroot\databases\localtime.inc on line 22

00:26

Please give me your assistance.

God Bless You.

As this script uses sessions (they need to send cookies) you should call session_start() before any output from the page.

Mr. Martin,

Do you have this script in alternate version that stores the result in persistent cookies?

I've wrote a function that does the time converting quite well. You just need to add the time zone you want to the function. For example -5 and 8. The following is the function:

function getGmt($timezone){

$time = gmdate("F j, Y, g:i a",time() + (3600 * $timezone));

return $time;

}

I explained it in more detail @ http://members.tripod.co.uk/chuayw2000/blog/generate.php?page=php

I've done the exact opposite to this - a constantly updating JavaScript clock that is accurate to your server, not to your user's local time. If you wanted that, it's at http://james.cridland.net/code/clock.html

I'm about to work on something that uses PHP and JavaScript to display a schedule (for a radio station, for example) that displays the programme times in local time, hence why I stumbled across this page.

I wrote a very similar example based on a Cookie: http://phpcenter.de/phorum/read.php?f=1&i=33573&t=33498 (Scroll to the bottom of the page. It's in German but my script comments are in English of course.)

Hi, this is an alternative that could make things easier:

<?php

setlocale (LC_TIME, $_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"]);

$mytime= gmstrftime("%b %d %Y %H:%M:%S", mktime ())."<br>";

echo $mytime;

?>

And, to replace u'r five page solution(just joking)

<?php

setlocale (LC_TIME, $_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"]);

$mytime= strftime("%b %d %Y %H:%M:%S", mktime ())."<br>";

echo $mytime;

?>

The use of

$_SERVER["HTTP_ACCEPT_LANGUAGE"]

in setlocale isn't a good way of dealing with DST. en-us is what shows on my php_info() page for that variable. That doesn't tell me where my time zone is in the US.

Hi Martin,

It seems to work for me but not sure the result is right. Here is my MySQL query:

$sql = "SELECT UNIX_TIMESTAMP(loaded_time) FROM dbload_delta";

$result = mysql_query("$sql");

list($loaded_time) = mysql_fetch_row($result);

$last_loaded = date("g:i:s A T M d, Y", $loaded_time);

echo("Last delta load @ $last_loaded.");

Output 1:

Last delta load @ 8:09:57 PM PDT Sep 05, 2003.

Using your format_datetime() func:

$user_localtime = format_datetime($loaded_time);

echo " Localtime: $user_localtime";

Output 2:

Localtime: 5 Sep 2003 8:09pm GMT

Where "Output 1" is PDT/PST TZ (Server Time)and "Output 2" is EST TZ (User Time). I'm in EST TZ. Am I supposed to get 5 Sep 2003 11:09pm GMT instead?

echo gmdate("F j, Y, g:i a",time() + (3600 * $timezone));

This did the job for me!

Thanks for writing your function and getting this discussion started. It has been very helpful!

Hey I have a problem that my forum is hosted on an american server so the time for all the posts is wrong, is there a way for the user to select an offset based on their location?

this depends that the user has the correct timezone set on their machine and also that javascript is running.

I suggest u all just think really hard about the best method for your scripts b4 trying this script

here is a bit of code for displaying localtime with php:

-------------

<?

// USER LOCAL TIME

function GetTZOffset() {

$Offset = date("O", 0);

$Parity = $Offset < 0 ? -1 : 1;

$Offset = $Parity * $Offset;

$Offset = ($Offset - ($Offset % 100))/100*60 + $Offset % 100;

return $Parity * $Offset;

}

$TZOffset = GetTZOffset();

$t_time = time()-$TZOffset*60; #Counter adjust for localtime()

$t_arr = localtime($t_time);

$localTime = $t_arr[3].'-'.$t_arr[4].'-'.$t_arr[5].' '.$t_arr[2].':'.$t_arr[1].':'.$t_arr[0];

echo '<p>your time: '.$localTime;

?>

oups sorry, i'm wrong :(

There is no wrong way to do this - if you've found a way for it to work for you, post it here, and let someone try it. Don't tell someone their method is wrong simply because it doesn't fulfil the needs of your particular piece of software.

How would I change my time and date to read five hours before GMT time? It seems like the site is five hours ahead of my time, EST.

Thanks,

George.

How would I change my time and date to read five hours before GMT time? It seems like the site is five hours ahead of my time, EST.

Thanks,

George.

You can swipe the gmt_offset,

and stick it into a hidden form element,

then figure out what the server offset

is in relation, and you're set.

<script type="text/javascript">

now = new Date();

loc = now.getTimezoneOffset()/60;

off = (-dif);

document.write('<INPUT TYPE="hidden"

NAME="gmt_offset" VALUE='+ off +'>');

</script>

<?php

$offset_server = substr(strftime("%z"),0,-2) + 0;

?>

offset = new Date().getTimezoneOffset()/(-60);

document.write('<INPUT NAME="gmt_offset" VALUE='+ offset +'>');

I've tried this code and had a number of problems. Firstly I couldnt get any of the session stuff to work. Eventually I gave up on this, and just used a the form varieable each time. The code still operates.

Second the code that adds offset to all links is very neat, but the ; didnt work in m,y case. When I cahnged it to & it did work. There was no need to use & amp;

Third, I think there is a bug in the code. In format_datetime which is running on the server, you use date. I think it should be gmdate. Here in UK we are in daylight saving time, 1 hour from GMT and use of date here adds a 1 hour error. This is server code so there should be no dependency on the local time zone.

The last problem I had is that my browser does not know to report the time as BST (British Summer Time) but reports it as GMT +1. This is not really good enough. I've hard coded GMT +1 as BST, but my worry is that other parts of the world may report GMT +1 offset and then its not appropriate to describe this as BST.

Because I'm not using the code exactly as proscribed it may be that some of these factors have been introduced by me, especially the date/gmdate thing. What do you think.

regards,

Mark.

This isn't that complicated, most of the PHP up there isn't going to work except in very, very simple applications. The javascript and the first bit of PHP to put the time zone offset into a session variable is what's important. Once you have the user's time zone you can get your server's time zone by using

date("z")

The way a UNIX timestamp works is, it's a number of seconds since the beginning of the UNIX epoch until the time it represents. So to adjust it to GMT, you add the timestamp to date("z"), to adjust it to your user's timezone you add it to date("z") and then again to $_SESSION['offset']*60 (the javascript offset is in minutes, so you multiply it by 60 to get seconds).

Now that you know how to convert a date from server time to user time, if you can't do anything with it it's your problem.

I think this is a great tutorial, very helpful.

I think date("Z") will have to be used instead of date("z").

Hi,

Just wanted to know if this piece of script will display the servers time on which the website is running. In other words can it show the time of the server from which the webpage is coming.

Would be very grateful if you could help. Thanks & Regards - Shailen

I've done this in a VB.Net website, all I do is add some code to the starting page that passes the tzoffset (found using javascript) to the first visible page. If that page finds the argument, it adds it to the session otherwise, it assumes it was already set. This should work from php too.

ok i got some scripts from u guys, but i am a n00b, and i know nothing of what to do.

I have my html files for my website done, but i want a login to be able to go to a password protected page, how can i do this? If u don't know how, thanks anyways.

this is good :)

here is a VERY simple implementation of this concept

http://rehfeld.us/dev/timezone/

I have tried all the scripts here, and all of them bring up different dates, and whats more; none are my time... how do I get it to show waht time it is on my computer?

-David

I tried this script and it works, but it reports only the offset ignoring if DST is active or not in that period. So I'm thinking of reporting through the javascript the current time in combination with offset, to allow to calculate the correct time. Any comment?

<?php

$timezone = -6; //(GMT -6:00) Ecuador

echo gmdate("Y/m/j H:i:s", time() + 3600*($timezone+date("I")));

?>

Achei muito interessante esta vossa PAG. / SITE. Legal mesmo.

Desejo muito sucesso.