Question

When I use current_timestamp with MySQL, I get the correct time, but when I use

$mysqldate = date( 'Y-m-d H:i:s' );

I get the date with with an hour delay (eg, 4:42 PM is 5:42 PM).
I understood that both function use the server’s local time – can someone explain the difference?

Thanks.

Answer 1

The global system time will be set via the /etc/localtime file, which will be either a symlink or a copy of a zone file from /usr/share/zoneinfo/ on most systems. Applications will use this as their default.

PHP can override this in a couple different ways:

1. date.timezone in php.ini
2. setting the TZ environment variable, e.g. putenv("TZ=US/Central");
3. date_default_timezone_set function (in PHP >= 5.1.0)

MySQL can override this by running the following query immediately after connecting:

SET time_zone = 'US/Central'