So I have this app that receives packages from cell phones including gps time which is UTC. I store this in my mysql database from php currently.
I have two datetime fields one which contains the time from the phone and one which is the servers time.
my query looks like this: INSERT INTO GeoLocation(Time, ServerTime) VALUES(FROM_UNIXTIME(1353438497), UTC_TIMESTAMP())
I simplified and removed all other values. The current utc unix timestamp is right now: 1353438597 accordnign to http://www.unixtimestamp.com/index.php so my other cellphone timestamp is 100 seconds old, makes perfect sense.
now however to the funny thing. I should mention i live in Sweden with +1 timezone and the server is in sweden to, most likely configured to swedish time
when i use phpmyadmin to view the values just inserted it says that Time is 2012-11-20 20:08:17 but server time is 2012-11-20 19:08:23. So even tho both were correct utc times, one entered ass From_unixtime and the other with UTC_TIMESTAMP they now show different time.
I read you needed to set the timezone with SET time_zone = ‘+00:00’;
so I tried to open a query window in phpmyadmin and entered
SET time_zone = '+00:00';
SELECT Time, ServerTime FROM `GeoLocation` WHERE 1;
but i still get the exact same times reported for both fields.
however phpmyadmin does run both rows because if i instead try this:
SELECT @ @global.time_zone , @ @session.time_zone
I get this:
@@global.time_zone @@session.time_zone
SYSTEM SYSTEM
but if I do this:
SET time_zone = '+00:00';
SELECT @@global.time_zone, @@session.time_zone
I get this:
@@global.time_zone @@session.time_zone
SYSTEM +00:00
So it doesn’t make any sense to me, I have confirmed I feed it UTC time (from unix time) and yet it displays it as UTC+1 and it does not help to set time zone.
Any ideas?
The solution is to execute “SET time_zone = ‘+00:00’;” before STORING data in the database (insert).
It will do you no good when you read the data, but if you call it when you store the data everything will be fine.