Question

I’m wondering which Codeigniter function would be the best function to use for the gmdate php function.

The purpose of this is taking a string unix timestamp and formatting it.

Answer 1

You have options. You can simply use original PHP function like this:

$utc_str = gmdate("M d Y H:i:s", time());

Or you can utilize now() function in date helper of CI, but by doing this you need to first set your date_reference of config to gmt:

$config['time_reference'] = 'gmt';

And call it like this:

$utc_str = date("M d Y H:i:s", now());

Since now() returns the current time as a Unix timestamp, referenced either to your server’s local time or GMT, based on the “time reference” setting in your config file.