datetime - 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

PHP's strtotime function will interpret timezone codes, like UTC. If you get the date from the database/client without the timezone code, but know it's UTC, then you can append it.

Assuming you get the date with timestamp code (like "Fri Mar 23 2012 22:23:03 GMT-0700 (PDT)", which is what Javascript code ""+(new Date()) gives):

$time = strtotime($dateWithTimeZone);
$dateInLocal = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $time);

Or if you don't, which is likely from MySQL, then:

$time = strtotime($dateInUTC.' UTC');
$dateInLocal = date("Y-m-d H:i:s", $time);