Question

On my server I store the UTC time in the database for certain actions the user does. I want to convert that to local time for the user when they view the web page.

I could certainly do this with the utc time:

function setlocalTime($utc) {
  $timezone_offset = -5; //us east
  $recording_date = date('Y-m-d g:i A',strtotime($utc)+$timezone_offset*60*60);
  return $recording_date;
}

Obviously this is just for my timezone. What is the best way to do this for everyone’s timezone. Do I need to create a timezone library or is there a better way to convert my UTC time to the users local time?

Answer 1

PHP has a means of converting, but the thing that you have to really pay attention to is making sure you understand what the local timezone is. You probably want to find some way to get this from the browser (googling might help here).