UTC Offset in PHP

Question

What's the easiest way to get the UTC offset in PHP, relative to the current (system) timezone?

Answer 1

timezone_offset_get()

$this_tz_str = date_default_timezone_get();
$this_tz = new DateTimeZone($this_tz_str);
$now = new DateTime("now", $this_tz);
$offset = $this_tz->getOffset($now);

Untested, but should work

Answer 2

  date('Z');

returns the UTC offset in seconds.