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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-31T15:53:16+00:00

I searched the PHP manual and StackOverflow too, but haven’t really found a proper

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I searched the PHP manual and StackOverflow too, but haven’t really found a proper answer to my question. My dates are stored in UTC. Now if I do:

$date = new DateTime('2012-03-16 14:00:00', 'UTC');
$date->setTimezone('Europe/Budapest');

Will DateTime::setTimezone() set DST automatically? So if I format the string, will it output 15:00:00 in summer time and 16:00:00 in winter time? Or will I have to set DST manually?

Related question, if I want to get a DST independent UTC time (that I can store), will the following work?

$date = new DateTime('now', 'UTC');
$date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s');

Or better to use simple gmdate('Y-m-d H:i:s')?

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  1. Editorial Team

    Your assumption is correct.

    In addition, this would have taken you 10 seconds to verify yourself.

    Edit:

    The correct syntax is:

    $date = new DateTime('2012-03-16 14:00:00', new DateTimeZone('UTC'));

    As to your second question. The timezone passed in the DateTime constructor is the ‘reference’ timezone.

    You should still call ->setTimeZone(new DateTimeZone(‘UTC’)) to format it in the UTC timezone, unless the default timezone was also set to UTC (date_default_timezone_set).

    Next time, try a little harder trying stuff out before asking.

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