asked on 8/18/2016

Local Date / Time

In php programs, I have for a long time used this:

date_default_timezone_set("America/Los_Angeles");

To get the date / time in Pacific Time, USA. Other parameters for US Central, etc.

I am doing some custom pages on a word press site; it does not seem to work.

I seem to get GMT.

Does that not work in WordPress?

The site is hosted at WPEngine. Could that be the problem? I think they operate their servers on GMT

Of course I can "manually" convert to Pacific Time by adding 8 hours.

WordPress PHP

Last Comment

Ray Paseur

8/19/2016

Ray Paseur

8/19/2016

Where in your code is the date_default_timezone_set() function called? If it is called before using the date/time functions, it will have the appropriate effect. If the values from the date/time functions are set and stored before the function call, you will get the default values. You can use phpinfo() to determine what timezone settings are in effect at the time your date/time functions are called.

Kyaw Wanna

8/19/2016

Please try the code below :

$date_format = get_option( 'date_format' );
$time_format = get_option( 'time_format' );
echo date( "{$date_format} {$time_format}", current_time( 'timestamp' ) );

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Richard Korts

8/19/2016

ASKER

Ray:

The date_default_timezone_set() function is the first line of code.

Richard

Scott Fell

8/19/2016

Are you trying to use time zones when somebody has logged in and they indicated in a form tha was submitted they are in NY, Chicago or LA? OR do you want to be able to show content based on a non logged in users location?

If the latter, then you can use javascript and keep in mind that your php code will run on the server, then javascript will run after the html is generated. http://www.w3schools.com/jsref/jsref_gettimezoneoffset.asp and I have created a slightly different function that will convert to hours and remember our friends that are offset in fractions of an hour
http://jsbin.com/xuziwojaze/edit?html,output

<html>
<head>
  <script src="https://code.jquery.com/jquery-2.2.4.js"></script>
   <script>
     $(function(){
  $('.result').text(getUTCDifference() );
});

function getUTCDifference() {
    var d = new Date();
    var n = d.getTimezoneOffset();
    var h = n / 60; // hours
    var f = h.toFixed(2);  // http://www.timeanddate.com/time/time-zones-interesting.html
    
    return f; // in hours, 2 decimal places
}
  </script>
  <meta charset="utf-8">
  <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width">
  <title>JS Bin</title>
</head>
<body>
  <div class="result"></div>
  <div>
    <p>Your time zone is offset by <span class="result"></span> hours</p>
  </div>
</body>
</html>