If you have the same application running in different countries, you may have some troubles getting the local time..
In my case, I was having troubles with a clock created with Macromedia Flash... the time shown by the clock was supposed to be set up by the server, passing the timestamp. When I moved the file to another country, I got a wrong time...
You can use the timezone offset ( date("Z") ) to handle this kind of thing...
<?php
$timestamp = time()+date("Z");
echo gmdate("Y/m/d H:i:s",$timestamp);
?>
gmdate
(PHP 4, PHP 5, PHP 7, PHP 8)
gmdate — Format a GMT/UTC date/time
Description
Identical to the date() function except that the time returned is Greenwich Mean Time (GMT).
Parameters
Return Values
Returns a formatted date string.
Changelog
| Version | Description |
|---|---|
| 8.0.0 |
timestamp is nullable now.
|
Examples
Example #1 gmdate() example
When run in Finland (GMT +0200), the first line below prints "Jan 01 1998 00:00:00", while the second prints "Dec 31 1997 22:00:00".
<?php
echo date("M d Y H:i:s", mktime(0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1998));
echo gmdate("M d Y H:i:s", mktime(0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1998));
?>See Also
- DateTimeImmutable::__construct() - Returns new DateTimeImmutable object
- DateTimeInterface::format() - Returns date formatted according to given format
- date() - Format a Unix timestamp
- mktime() - Get Unix timestamp for a date
- gmmktime() - Get Unix timestamp for a GMT date
- IntlDateFormatter::format() - Format the date/time value as a string
add a note
User Contributed Notes 17 notes
fernandobassani at gmail dot com ¶
18 years ago
Kogik inc dot -- info at kogik dot com ¶
20 years ago
Wath out for summer time and winter time...
If you want to get the current date and time based on GMT you could use this :
<?php
$timezone = -5; //(GMT -5:00) EST (U.S. & Canada)
echo gmdate("Y/m/j H:i:s", time() + 3600*($timezone+date("I")));
?>
this would gives: 2004/07/8 14:35:19 in summer time
and 2004/07/8 13:35:19 in winter time.
Note that date("I") returns 1 in summer and 0 in winter.
Anonymous ¶
22 years ago
For an RFC 1123 (HTTP header date) date, try:
<?php
$rfc_1123_date = gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s T', time());
?>
ttech5593 at gmail dot com ¶
18 years ago
For me most of the examples here needed the + or - seconds to set the time zone. I wanted a faster way to get the time zone in seconds. So I created this :
<?php
$h = "3";// Hour for time zone goes here e.g. +7 or -4, just remove the + or -
$hm = $h * 60;
$ms = $hm * 60;
$gmdate = gmdate("m/d/Y g:i:s A", time()-($ms)); // the "-" can be switched to a plus if that's what your time zone is.
echo "Your current time now is : $gmdate . ";
?>
It works. Hope it helps.
Anonymous ¶
22 years ago
Do not use the "T" timezone specifier to generate "GMT", as this may return "UTC" or "GMT+0000" or "Z" or something else which depends on the running platform, which would not be RFC1123 compliant.
Use 'D, d M Y H:i:s \G\M\T' which forces the value of the timezone indicator.
Note that RFC1123 requires the use of ENGLISH day and month abbreviations. They MUST NOT be localized!
An example of the RFC1123 format for full dates is:
Sun, 06 Nov 1994 08:49:37 GMT
Note the presence of the leading 0 (RFC1123 dates have a fixed size, and space padding is prohibited because it causes problems with fixed size handling when such dates are used in HTTP headers that may compress whitespaces.
Some proxies accept also the ISO 8601 format, but this is not documented in HTTP/1.1 specs (RFC2616).
Examples:
<?php
header('Date: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s \G\M\T', time()));
header('Last-Modified: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s \G\M\T', time()));
header('Expires: '.gmdate('D, d M Y H:i:s \G\M\T', time() + 3600));
?>
or if you prefer double quotes and don't want to bother with double backslashes:
<?php
header("Date: ".gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s", time())." GMT");
header("Last-Modified: ".gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s", time())." GMT");;
header("Expires: ".gmdate("D, d M Y H:i:s", time() + 3600)." GMT");
?>
ncofreNOSPAMPLEASE at step2u dot com ¶
19 years ago
Want to put different International Times in your web?
First create a database including the GMT and the DST (find it f.i. at timeanddate.com). Be careful, because there are several different DST dates and options.
Once you have your function which calculates the GMT hour difference (it can be a decimal!!), sum it to the Unix Time (remember that unix time is GMT, not local: f.i. gmdate("U")===date("U)).
Don't forget to recalculate the GMT difference to seconds before it.
Then format your date using gmdate() (not date()!) and... you've got your International Time!
<?php
$city["Name"] = "Barcelona";
$city["GMT"] = 1.0;
$city["actualDST"] = 1.0; //Because it's summer time
$gmt_diff = $city["GMT"]+$city["actualDST"]; //your functions for getting the hour difference betweer the city and the GMT
$city_time = time()+($gmt_diff*3600); //sum the timestamps
echo gmdate("H:i",$city_time); //echo the formatted date
echo " h. in the beautiful city of ".$city["Name"];
?>
genna87 at gmail dot com ¶
8 years ago
A function to get the ISO 8601 timestamp in UTC with precision up to microseconds
function iso_8601_utc_time($precision = 0)
{
$time = gettimeofday();
if (is_int($precision) && $precision >= 0 && $precision <= 6) {
$total = (string) $time['sec'] . '.' . str_pad((string) $time['usec'], 6, '0', STR_PAD_LEFT);
$total_rounded = bcadd($total, '0.' . str_repeat('0', $precision) . '5', $precision);
@list($integer, $fraction) = explode('.', $total_rounded);
$format = $precision == 0
? "Y-m-d\TH:i:s\Z"
: "Y-m-d\TH:i:s,".$fraction."\Z";
return gmdate($format, $integer);
}
return false;
}
paul at sysnyx dot com ¶
19 years ago
Gives user the ability to use their timezone preferences.
I had to create this script for a very large community. I first made any posts to the database that would display the date using just time();
Example: mysql_query("INSERT INTO `table` (`datetime`) VALUES ('".time()."')");
Also, for their timezone preference, I had the values as (example):
(Eastern Timezone) -5 hours
(Newfoundland) -3 hours -30 minutes
This information would be saved in the users table.
To display the date and time in their respective timezone preference:
<?php
function datetime($datetime,$zone){
if(date('I')):$datetime+=60*60;endif;
return gmdate('m-d-Y - h:i:sa',strtotime($zone,$datetime));
}
?>
$datetime would be the information pulled from the database from a post for news, forums, etcetera (remember, the inserted table data for the time was using time();)
$zone would be the information pulled from the database from the users timezone preference.
I also used cookies to store their timezone:
$sth=mysql_query("SELECT `datetime` FROM `table` LIMIT 1");
$row=mysql_fetch_assoc($sth);
echo datetime($row['datetime'],$_COOKIE['timezone']);
Remember to set the 'm-d-Y - h:i:sa' to how you wish the time to display. Visit the manual about date().
Blazeme ¶
17 years ago
Here, I wrote a function (from code above) for easy time zone
settings.
Regards.
<?php
function datum($datum=true) {
$sign = "+"; // Whichever direction from GMT to your timezone. + or -
$h = "1"; // offset for time (hours)
$dst = true; // true - use dst ; false - don't
if ($dst==true) {
$daylight_saving = date('I');
if ($daylight_saving){
if ($sign == "-"){ $h=$h-1; }
else { $h=$h+1; }
}
}
$hm = $h * 60;
$ms = $hm * 60;
if ($sign == "-"){ $timestamp = time()-($ms); }
else { $timestamp = time()+($ms); }
$gmdate = gmdate("m.d.Y. g:i A", $timestamp);
if($datum==true) {
return $gmdate;
}
else {
return $timestamp;
}
}
?>
If you set first argument to true, it'll return formated date.
If false, will return $timestamp.
Enjoy!
rob AT rob DASH jakobs DOT nl ¶
6 years ago
If you want to calculate the time period between two clocked events that happen less than 24 hours apart, for example the daylight period between sunrise and sunset, you can take advantage of the fact that the gmdate() function also accepts a negative timestamp. If you want to present the time period in the format hours:minutes you can use
<?php
$sunrise_clocked = '7:45'; // hours with or without leading zeros
$sunset_clocked = '21:05'; // hours with or without leading zeros
$time_past = gmdate('G:i', strtotime($sunset_clocked) - strtotime($sunrise_clocked));
echo 'Daylight period is ' . $time_past . ' (hours:minutes)';
?>
The above example will output
Daylight period is 13:20 (hours:minutes)
The fun part comes in when the sunset time is next day (and therefore in value lower than the sunrise clock time), for example:
$sunrise_clocked = '18:45';
$sunset_clocked = '09:30';
will output
Daylight period is 14:45 (hours:minutes)
This trick does NOT work with date(), because the output may then be off a number of hours, depending on your time zone.
Tested with PHP 5.6.35 and 7.2.4.
Sir Derek G ¶
18 years ago
Here's a nifty little function that returns a random timestamp between two dates.
<?php
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
// Return a random timestamp between two dates (inclusive)
// Example: Tue, 08 Nov 2004 06:47:10 GMT
//
// time - Starting time string
// Valid Examples:
// 10 September 2001
// next Thursday
// last Monday
// now
//
// time2 - Ending time string
function randomTimestamp($time = "" , $time2 = "")
{
if(!$time) $time = strtotime("10 September 2000");
if(!$time2) $time2 = strtotime("24 November 2005");
$timestamp = date(" D, d M Y", rand( settype($time , int) , settype($time2 , int) )); //Must be called once before becoming random, ???
$timestamp = date(" D, d M Y", rand($time , $time2))." ";//Now it's random
$h = rand(1,23);
if(strlen($h) == 1 ) $h = "0$h";
$t = $h.":";
$d = rand(1,29);
if(strlen($d) == 1 ) $d = "0$d";
$t .= $d.":";
$s = rand(0,59);
if(strlen($s) == 1 ) $s = "0$s";
$t .= $s;
$timestamp .= $t." GMT";
return $timestamp;
}
?>
jhechtf at gmail dot com ¶
17 years ago
My function for something like this is like so:
<?php
function actual_time($format,$offset,$timestamp){
//Offset is in hours from gmt, including a - sign if applicable.
//So lets turn offset into seconds
$offset = $offset*60*60;
$timestamp = $timestamp + $offset;
//Remember, adding a negative is still subtraction ;)
return gmdate($format,$timestamp);
}
?>
It's always worked fine for me.
gefiltefishee at comcast dot net ¶
18 years ago
I was struggling with how to get my browser to output MY local time using gmdate().
I figured it out and here's what you do (ASSUMING THE SERVER IS ON GMT, If not, just echo a generic gmdate() without timezone setting and calculate the number of hours ahead or behind you are of that time, convert it to seconds and add [for ahead] or subtract [for behind] that value to time() ):
NOTE: these are US times [setlocale(LC_TIME, 'en_US')]
for Central Time (7 hours behind GMT):
gmdate("format", time()-(25200));
For Pacific Time (9 hours behind GMT):
gmdate("format", time()-(32400));
REMEMBER - THE VALUES ABOVE ASSUME THE SERVER IS ON GMT
I used the following gmdate() format:
"l, F jS, Y g:i a"
but you can use what you like ;)
Hope this helps!
rob at geek dot co dot nz ¶
19 years ago
It's worth noting the distinction between gmgate() and date() with regards to day light savings time. If your server uses universal time and makes an adjustment by locale for daylight savings time, you will want to use date(). gmdate will display the non-adjuisted time.
abhijagtap73 at gmail dot com ¶
6 years ago
I am getting a string which is a timestamp:
string(13) "1532941682753"
I need to convert it to date in the following format: (yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.SSS) I can do it with
gmdate('yyyy-mm-dd hh:mm:ss.SSS', $timestamp)
but I get the error that 2nd argument is not an int. So I need to convert my timestamp to valid int. I tried to cast my timestamp string to int but the problem is it is too long for int and every time I get the maximum allowed for int, which is int(2147483647). Any ideas how to fix it would be welcome. Thank you.
www.l-serwis.wpt.pl ¶
21 years ago
If you want to get time in your timezone try this:
<?php
$zone=3600*0 //GMT
$zone=3600*1 //CET
$zone=3600*-5//USA
$date=gmdate("D M Y H:i", time() + $zone);
?>
