Question

The PHP DateTime object (and more specifically, the DateTimeZone object), supports many time zones. That is all nice and well, but is there a way to pass in a GMT offset as a time zone?

I know it’s possible to simply add or subtract hours and apply some math, but I was wondering whether there was a built-in, robust way of doing things (or do I need to make my own abstraction layer for this).

TL;DR How can I pass GMT+N values as time zones in PHP’s DateTime or DateTimeZone objects?

Answer 1

You can do this:

$tz = new DateTimeZone('etc/GMT+2');

But there is this warning:

Please do not use any of the timezones listed here (besides UTC), they only exist for backward compatible reasons.

The list only supports whole hours. Some of your users may live in time zones that aren’t aligned by the hour. Also note that if users select a time via a UTC offset, they will have to change it twice a year during Daylight Saving / Summer Time. Selecting by location eliminates that need.