Home/ Questions/Q 784505
In Process

The Archive Base Latest Questions

Editorial Team
  • 0
Asked: 2026-05-14T20:43:28+00:00

I’m having a look at the date_sunset function in PHP and have met an

  • 0

I’m having a look at the date_sunset function in PHP and have met an issue that I find a bit strange. I have this piece of code:

$sunset = date_sunset(mktime(0, 0, 0, 5, 14, 2010),
    $format,                // Format
    55.596041,              // Latitude
    12.992495,              // Longitude
    90,                     // Zenith
    2                       // GMT Offset
);

For the three different formats, that would give me:

SUNFUNCS_RET_STRING    21:05
SUNFUNCS_RET_DOUBLE    21.095732016315
SUNFUNCS_RET_TIMESTAMP 1273863944 // H:i:s O -> 19:05:44 +0000

Why is the timestamp format ignoring the gmt offset? Is is supposed to be like that? If so what is the reason behind that?

Share

Leave an answer

You must login to add an answer.

Need An Account,

1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    date_sunset(,SUNFUNCS_RET_TIMESTAMP,,,,) isn’t ignoring the offset, the function you have used to format the timestamp value is (i.e. the timezone is set to utc+0), e.g.

    $sunset = date_sunset(mktime(0, 0, 0, 5, 14, 2010),
    SUNFUNCS_RET_TIMESTAMP,                // Format
    55.596041,              // Latitude
    12.992495,              // Longitude
    90,                     // Zenith
    2                       // GMT Offset
);

date_default_timezone_set('UTC');
echo date('H:i:s O', $sunset), "\n";

date_default_timezone_set('Europe/Berlin');
echo date('H:i:s O', $sunset), "\n";

date_default_timezone_set('America/New_York');
echo date('H:i:s O', $sunset), "\n";

    prints

    19:06:07 +0000
21:06:07 +0200
15:06:07 -0400
    • 0