PHP: getting local time

The time is not coming back local (EST), it's coming back off by one time zone. Here's why...

So,I need the attribute for localtime.

Here is the Prepared Statement, which seems to be adding new records without errors:

$smt = $db->prepare("insert into  contacts (statusid, fname, lname, street, city, state, zip, title, company, voterid, create_date, update_date) values (:statusid, :fname, :lname, :street, :city, :state, :zip, :title, :company, :voterid, :create_date, :update_date)");
$smt->bindValue(':statusid', 5, SQLITE3_INTEGER); // statusId of 5 == "Pending"
$smt->bindValue(':fname', $_GET['fname'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':lname', $_GET['lname'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':street', $_GET['street'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':city', $_GET['city'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':state', $_GET['state'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':zip', $_GET['zip'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':title', $_GET['title'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':company', $_GET['company'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':voterid', $_GET['vid'], SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':create_date', date("Y-m-d h:i:s"), SQLITE3_TEXT);
$smt->bindValue(':update_date', date("Y-m-d h:i:s"), SQLITE3_TEXT);


$result = $smt->execute();
var_dump($result->fetchArray(SQLITE3_ASSOC));
$smt->close();
$db->close();
$db=null;

Select allOpen in new window

I guess localtime is not what I want. I want to explicitly ask for EST or, more correctly, EDT.

Does this call:
date_default_timezone_set("America/New_York");

also set the page, when I use DateTime objects?

This code crashes my page:

$date = new DateTime(null, new DateTimeZone('America/New_York'));
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n"


$date = new DateTime('2000-01-01'); // WORKS
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:sP') . "\n";

$date = new DateTime(null, new DateTimeZone('America/New_York')); // FAILS
echo $date->format('Y-m-d H:i:s') . "\n"

What am I missing?

You know what, Scott? After reading your post. I probably should use UTC for all data INSERT and UPDATE calls, and use local time for the UI. So, I presume I would set the config.php to be UTC. Then, when displaying the current time (if I ever needed to) I would display localtime.

Make sense?