Please note that on Debian/Ubuntu this function will return the system timezone defined in /etc/localtime if date.timezone is not defined, even with PHP 5.4+
See http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=673763#10
date_default_timezone_get
(PHP 5 >= 5.1.0, PHP 7, PHP 8)
date_default_timezone_get — Gets the default timezone used by all date/time functions in a script
Description
date_default_timezone_get(): string
In order of preference, this function returns the default timezone by:
-
Reading the timezone set using the date_default_timezone_set() function (if any)
-
Reading the value of the date.timezone ini option (if set)
If none of the above succeed, date_default_timezone_get()
will return a default timezone of UTC.
Parameters
This function has no parameters.
Return Values
Returns a string.
Examples
Example #1 Getting the default timezone
<?php
date_default_timezone_set('Europe/London');
if (date_default_timezone_get()) {
echo 'date_default_timezone_set: ' . date_default_timezone_get() . '<br />';
}
if (ini_get('date.timezone')) {
echo 'date.timezone: ' . ini_get('date.timezone');
}
?>The above example will output something similar to:
date_default_timezone_set: Europe/London date.timezone: Europe/London
Example #2 Getting the abbreviation of a timezone
<?php
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');
echo date_default_timezone_get() . ' => ' . date('e') . ' => ' . date('T');
?>The above example will output:
America/Los_Angeles => America/Los_Angeles => PST
See Also
- date_default_timezone_set() - Sets the default timezone used by all date/time functions in a script
- List of Supported Timezones
add a note
User Contributed Notes 9 notes
bohwaz ¶
11 years ago
glennpratt+php at gmail dot com ¶
13 years ago
In my case, I'm not sure I can guess the correct timezone any better than PHP and it's no where near important enough to nag the user, so...
<?php
// Suppress DateTime warnings
date_default_timezone_set(@date_default_timezone_get());
?>
smcbride at msn dot com ¶
3 years ago
This function is not very useful for getting the OS timezone. One way to do it is to look at the results of 'timedatectl' from the OS. You can also look at the link from /etc/localtime
>file /etc/localtime
/etc/localtime: symbolic link to /usr/share/zoneinfo/America/Los_Angeles
>timedatectl
Local time: Thu 2020-12-24 07:11:27 PST
Universal time: Thu 2020-12-24 15:11:27 UTC
RTC time: Thu 2020-12-24 15:11:27
Time zone: America/Los_Angeles (PST, -0800)
System clock synchronized: yes
NTP service: active
RTC in local TZ: no
<?php
$dateinfo = trim(shell_exec("timedatectl | grep -i zone: 2>/dev/null"));
$dateinfoarray = explode(' ', $dateinfo);
echo 'Timezone = ' . $dateinfoarray[2] . PHP_EOL;
?>
andrea at -REMOVE- bhweb dot it ¶
9 years ago
Please note that "Damien dot Garrido dot Work at gmail dot com" code is wrong, the third parameter of sprintf must be divided by 60.
This is the corrected function:
<?php
function timezone_offset_string( $offset )
{
return sprintf( "%s%02d:%02d", ( $offset >= 0 ) ? '+' : '-', abs( $offset / 3600 ), abs( $offset % 3600 ) / 60 );
}
?>
mmulej at gmail dot com ¶
3 years ago
You can use this function to convert given UTC datetime string to your application's local datetime:
<?php
function utc_to_local($utcDatetime, $format = 'Y-m-d H:i:s')
{
$currentTimeZone = date_default_timezone_get();
date_default_timezone_set('UTC');
$localDatetime = (new DateTime($utcDatetime))
->setTimeZone(new DateTimeZone($currentTimeZone));
date_default_timezone_set($currentTimeZone);
return $localDatetime->format($format);
}
Damien dot Garrido dot Work at gmail dot com ¶
12 years ago
To get offset string from offset:
<?php
function timezone_offset_string( $offset )
{
return sprintf( "%s%02d:%02d", ( $offset >= 0 ) ? '+' : '-', abs( $offset / 3600 ), abs( $offset % 3600 ) );
}
$offset = timezone_offset_get( new DateTimeZone( 'Pacific/Kiritimati' ), new DateTime() );
echo "offset: " . timezone_offset_string( $offset ) . "\n";
$offset = timezone_offset_get( new DateTimeZone( 'Pacific/Tahiti' ), new DateTime() );
echo "offset: " . timezone_offset_string( $offset ) . "\n";
?>
Output:
offset: +14:00
offset: -10:00
benrwhite at gmail dot com ¶
11 years ago
For the reason that date_default_timezone_get() throws an error when the timezone isn't set in php.ini and then returns a default chosen by the system (rather than returning false to indicate to the script that a timezone hasn't been set), I've found that the following works when you want a script to detect when the ini value has not been set and want the script itself to choose a default in that case, while still allowing bootstrap scripts to set their own default using date_default_timezone_set().
<?php
set_error_handler(function ($errno, $errstr){
throw new Exception($errstr);
return false;
});
try{
date_default_timezone_get();
}
catch(Exception $e){
date_default_timezone_set('UTC'); // Sets to UTC if not specified anywhere in .ini
}
restore_error_handler();
harmor ¶
16 years ago
If you want to get the abbrivation (3 or 4 letter), instead of the long timezone string you can use date('T') function like this:
Input:
date_default_timezone_set('America/Los_Angeles');
echo date_default_timezone_get();
echo ' => '.date('e');
echo ' => '.date('T');
Output:
America/Los_Angeles => America/Los_Angeles => PST
dohpaz at gmail dot com ¶
17 years ago
date_default_timezone_get() will still emit a warning in E_STRICT if the timezone is not set; either by date_default_timezone_set() or the ini option of date.timezone.
This is probably not a big deal, but I thought I would contribute what I found.
