In my case, I'm not sure I can guess the correct timezone any better than PHP and it's no where near important enough to nag the user, so...
<?php
// Suppress DateTime warnings
date_default_timezone_set(@date_default_timezone_get());
?>
(PHP 5 >= 5.1.0, PHP 7)
date_default_timezone_get — Gets the default timezone used by all date/time functions in a script
In order of preference, this function returns the default timezone by:
Reading the timezone set using the date_default_timezone_set() function (if any)
Prior to PHP 5.4.0 only: Reading the TZ environment variable (if non empty)
Reading the value of the date.timezone ini option (if set)
Prior to PHP 5.4.0 only: Querying the host operating system (if supported and allowed by the OS). This uses an algorithm that has to guess the timezone. This is by no means going to work correctly for every situation. A warning is shown when this stage is reached. Do not rely on it to be guessed correctly, and set date.timezone to the correct timezone instead.
If none of the above succeed, date_default_timezone_get() will return a default timezone of UTC.
Returns a string.
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 5.4.0 | The TZ environment variable is no longer used to guess the timezone. |
| 5.4.0 | The timezone is no longer guessed from information available through the operating system as the guessed timezone can not be relied on. |
Example #1 Getting the default timezone
<?php
date_default_timezone_set('Europe/London');
if (date_default_timezone_get()) {
echo 'date_default_timezone_set: ' . date_default_timezone_get() . '<br />';
}
if (ini_get('date.timezone')) {
echo 'date.timezone: ' . ini_get('date.timezone');
}
?>
The above example will output something similar to:
date_default_timezone_set: Europe/London date.timezone: Europe/London
Example #2 Getting the abbreviation of a timezone
<?php
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');
echo date_default_timezone_get() . ' => ' . date('e') . ' => ' . date('T');
?>
The above example will output:
America/Los_Angeles => America/Los_Angeles => PST
In my case, I'm not sure I can guess the correct timezone any better than PHP and it's no where near important enough to nag the user, so...
<?php
// Suppress DateTime warnings
date_default_timezone_set(@date_default_timezone_get());
?>
Please note that on Debian/Ubuntu this function will return the system timezone defined in /etc/localtime if date.timezone is not defined, even with PHP 5.4+
See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=673763#10
To get offset string from offset:
<?php
function timezone_offset_string( $offset )
{
return sprintf( "%s%02d:%02d", ( $offset >= 0 ) ? '+' : '-', abs( $offset / 3600 ), abs( $offset % 3600 ) );
}
$offset = timezone_offset_get( new DateTimeZone( 'Pacific/Kiritimati' ), new DateTime() );
echo "offset: " . timezone_offset_string( $offset ) . "\n";
$offset = timezone_offset_get( new DateTimeZone( 'Pacific/Tahiti' ), new DateTime() );
echo "offset: " . timezone_offset_string( $offset ) . "\n";
?>
Output:
offset: +14:00
offset: -10:00
Please note that "Damien dot Garrido dot Work at gmail dot com" code is wrong, the third parameter of sprintf must be divided by 60.
This is the corrected function:
<?php
function timezone_offset_string( $offset )
{
return sprintf( "%s%02d:%02d", ( $offset >= 0 ) ? '+' : '-', abs( $offset / 3600 ), abs( $offset % 3600 ) / 60 );
}
?>
If you want to get the abbrivation (3 or 4 letter), instead of the long timezone string you can use date('T') function like this:
Input:
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');
echo date_default_timezone_get();
echo ' => '.date('e');
echo ' => '.date('T');
Output:
America/Los_Angeles => America/Los_Angeles => PST
For the reason that date_default_timezone_get() throws an error when the timezone isn't set in php.ini and then returns a default chosen by the system (rather than returning false to indicate to the script that a timezone hasn't been set), I've found that the following works when you want a script to detect when the ini value has not been set and want the script itself to choose a default in that case, while still allowing bootstrap scripts to set their own default using date_default_timezone_set().
<?php
set_error_handler(function ($errno, $errstr){
throw new Exception($errstr);
return false;
});
try{
date_default_timezone_get();
}
catch(Exception $e){
date_default_timezone_set('UTC'); // Sets to UTC if not specified anywhere in .ini
}
restore_error_handler();
date_default_timezone_get() will still emit a warning in E_STRICT if the timezone is not set; either by date_default_timezone_set() or the ini option of date.timezone.
This is probably not a big deal, but I thought I would contribute what I found.