Want to display the current date/time

Question

Hi I'm using php and sql through odbc to write a program and i hav got abit stuck in a part where i want to display the current date/time in the format date('Y-m-d H:i:s) but it only displays the gmt time. I want to add 8hours to it.Can any of you b able to help me.Thank you so much

Answer 1

Check out date_default_timezone_set. You can do something like:

date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');
print 'Current datetime is: ' . date('Y-m-d H:i:s');

You could use that to set the timezone to whatever timezone you need time to be at, and then use date normally. Alternatively, you can do this, using strtotime:

print 'Current datetime is: ' date('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime('+8 hours'));

Answer 2

If you're looking for a way to display a timestamp in a user's local time, you can use JavaScript:

function showtime(t)
{
 if (t == 0)
 {
  document.write("never");
  return;
 }

 var currentTime = new Date(t);
 var month = currentTime.getMonth() + 1;
 var day = currentTime.getDate();
 var year = currentTime.getFullYear();
 var hours = currentTime.getHours();
 var minutes = currentTime.getMinutes();
 var seconds = currentTime.getSeconds();
 document.write();
 if (minutes < 10){
 minutes = "0" + minutes;
 }
 if (seconds < 10){
 seconds = "0" + seconds;
 }
 document.write(month + "/" + day + "/" + year + "&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;" +
                hours + ":" + minutes + ":" + seconds + " ");
 if(hours > 11){
 document.write("PM");
 } else {
 document.write("AM");
 }
}

Then if you need to display a time, just make a call to it in the HTML and splice in the value from PHP:

<script type="text/javascript">showtime(<?=$time."000"?>)</script>

Answer 3

I would steer clear of the timezone method.

If i understood correctly, you want to add time, thus change it. An example could be, A task has been created NOW, and must be complete in 8 hours. The timezone method would only change the display of the date and time. Only change the timezone setting if you know your visitor's timezone, and datetime's must be shown relative to them.

Now: 1234418228 is 2009/02/12 00:57:08 in Montreal or 2009/02/11 09:57:08 in San Francisco. It's the exact same moment.

Appending to the first answer, date() and strtotime() are your friends.

strtotime( "+8 hours", $now ) $now being a timestamp of when it's supposed to relate to. So if your start time isn't time(), you can still use that. eg

strtotime( "+8 hours", strtotime( "2009/03/01 00:00:00" ); (8AM on 2009/03/01)

However, when dealing with intervals counted in weeks, or less, i prefer doing it 'mathematically'

$StartTime = strtotime( "2009/03/01 13:00:00" );
$EndTime = $StartTime + ( 8 * 60 * 60 );
date( "Y/m/d H:i:s", $EndTime ) ==> "2009/03/01 21:00:00"

3600 seconds in an hour, 86400 in a day.

You can't use this method for months, quarters or years because the number of seconds they last varies from one to the next.

Answer 4

If you want to use time for a certain timezone, then using date_default_timezone_set() is preferred. anyway you can provide the date() function another parmater: int timestamp. an integer representing the timestamp you would like date() to return the information about. so if you would like to show date('Y-m-d H:i:s') for now you can use this:

$now = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time() ); // time() returns current timestamp.
// if you omit the second parameter of date(), it will use current timestamp
// by default.
$_8hoursLater = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time()+60*60*8 );
$_8hoursBefore = date('Y-m-d H:i:s', time()-60*60*8 );