Choosing & Storing Timezones

[username]

Hi all,

So I am storing some datetime values in a MySQL db. I am setting the values as the current time according to whatever time it is in UTC (GMT +0). What I want to do is have the user set their timezone i.e Australia/Brisbane, and then the datetime which was stored in UTC time, would display the datetime of that timezone. In the case of this example, we would see:

UTC: 2010-06-14 01:00:00 (GMT + 0:00)
Australia/Brisbane: 2010-06-14 11:00:00 (GMT + 10:00)

I am setting the timzones using the putenv function, but am unsure how to changes a timezone I know was stored in UTC.

Your help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

[username]

So to clarify, the database would hold:

2010-06-14 01:00:00 (UTC: GMT + 0:00)

..and the front end of the website would show:

2010-06-14 11:00:00 (Australian/Brisbane: GMT + 10:00)

[Alcoholico]

I use something similar to this function:

## function offset_date
## format; same as php function date
## offset; offset seconds; ie: GMT+3 3*60*60
function offset_date($format, $unix_timestamp, $offset=0) {
$unix_timestamp = empty($unix_timestamp) ? time()+$offset : $unix_timestamp+$offset;
return @gmdate($format, $unix_timestamp);
}

Since your times are in ISO format, you probably find this function handy:

function ISOdate2UNIXtime($ISOdate) {
return gmmktime(substr($ISOdate,11,2),substr($ISOdate,14,2),substr($ISOdate,17,2),substr($ISOdate,5,2),substr($ISOdate,8,2),substr($ISOdate,0,4));
}

[g1smd]

Do you allow for changes caused by DST? You might need a toggle to allow for that.

New York is UTC-0500 in their Winter, and UTC-0400 in their Summer.

Southern Hemisphere winter occurs during Northern Hemisphere summer, and vice versa.

The UK uses UTC+0000 in their Winter and UTC+0100 in their Summer.

I would completely avoid the term "GMT". It was replaced by UTC in 1972.