Question

The server my PHP script is running on is set to UTC. I can’t seem to figure out a way to set all dates to the browser’s timezone. All dates displayed are formatted using PHP’s date() function.

I know that via JavaScript’s getTimezoneOffset() function, I can get the browser’s current UTC offset (-4, in my case). How can I tell PHP to use this offset? I can use date_default_timezone_set(), but how do I convert an offset, say -4, to a time zone string, say America/New_York?

Note: The server is running PHP 5.1.6 (with no DateTime class) and I am using CodeIgniter.

Answer 1

As per the comment above- you could use a cookie…:

Javascript:

var today = new Date();

function SetCookie(cookieName,cookieValue,nDays) {
 var expire = new Date();
 if (nDays==null || nDays==0) nDays=1;
 expire.setTime(today.getTime() + 3600000*24*nDays);
 document.cookie = cookieName+"="+escape(cookieValue)
                 + ";expires="+expire.toGMTString();
}

SetCookie("datecookie", today, 30);

window.location.href=window.location.href

PHP:

echo date("m d Y", strtotime($_COOKIE['datecookie']));