Question

I have a string which contains the date/time in it and i know its currently in Australia/Sydney timezone.

I now need to change it to GMT time.

I tried this, but its not changing the date:

$dateString = '2012-06-29 11:09:12'; // this is in Australia/Sydney timezone
$gmtDate = gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s', strtotime($dateString));
print_r($gmtDate); // output is 2012-06-29 11:09:12

How do I subtract the offset somehow from gmt, sorry, getting a little confused.

Answer 1

Perhaps your web-server is not set up in the Australia/Sydney timezone ?
The following answer will help you: how to convert php date formats to GMT and vice versa?

Here is what you can do:

$melbourne = new DateTimeZone('Australia/Melbourne');
$gmt = new DateTimeZone('GMT');

$date = new DateTime('2011-12-25 00:00:00', $melbourne);
$date->setTimezone($gmt);
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');
// Output: 2011-12-24 13:00:00
// At midnight on Christmas eve in Melbourne it will be 1pm on Christmas Eve GMT.

echo '<br/>';

// Convert it back to Australia/Melbourne
$date->setTimezone($melbourne);
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');