help with server time

[chase]

I logged into my power panel to change the time zone to -5 EST but continue to have some problems.

Iam using a news system and i have implemented a date and time code, this one(D M d, Y g:i:s A) but the problem i get is I can never get the actual correct time to appear when I post the news.

Is this server related?

[Vin DSL]

What server are you on -- and what type of account?

I've been on four different servers here, and they were all okay...

[Vin DSL]

Here you go: http://www.lenon.com/chase.php

This is the code I used...

<?php
// For Chase
$serverdate = date("D M d, Y g:i:s A");
print ("For Chase: &nbsp; <b>");
print ("$serverdate");
print ("</b> &nbsp; <p>");
?>

[chase]

thats weird because when i clicked on it, it showed me the time but its an hour off from the time on my comp. I.E the link showed 6:30 but the time on my windowns bar is 7:30

[Vin DSL]

That's 'server time'... Two hours difference from my local time!

[jason]

JPC is located in Houston, TX, which is in the US central time zone and the servers are set to reflect that. The code that you posted (which are parameters to the date command) only format the server's time, they don't adjust it.

To adjust the time displayed with PHP you'd have to do something like this:

$serverdate = date('D M d, Y g:i:s A', time() + 3600) 

In this code time() returns the current server time as Unix timestamp (equal to the number of seconds since midnight on Jan 1, 1970) and we add 3600 seconds (1 hour) from that number to get a new timestamp equal to the current time in the US eastern time zone. When you pass a timestamp as a second argument to date() it generates its display from that. With no second argument date() uses the server's current time.

If you didn't write the code for the news script you are using it may be difficult to make this change. Many prebuilt apps include options that allow you to adjust the displayed time, so check for that. Otherwise you may have to do some code searching.

--Jason

[sehh]

The correct and proper way is to set the correct timezone in PHP, thus ALL date/time functions will give the local time you want.

[Vin DSL]

Bah!

Look, there's a million ways to compute time!

What is time?

Answer: It's a way to measure the span between events!

Right now -- as we 'speak' -- as you're reading this -- it's all hours of the day n' night, and all seasons of the year, somewhere on Earth -- at this very moment. So, what difference does it make?

To my way of thinking, server time is as good as any!

If the OPER doesn't *feel* this way, tell 'us' what you want to do, and 'we' can do it -- server time -- local time -- time down under -- GMT -- GMT minus local -- Julian -- whatever!

It's all a mind **** anyway! Let 'us' know, and we'll go from there...

[jason]

The correct and proper way is to set the correct timezone in PHP, thus ALL date/time functions will give the local time you want.

PHP 5 supports a date.timezone configuration directive that allows you to control the timezone for your account/site/script automatically. Unfortunately it was introduced in PHP 5.1.0 and is not supported by any version of PHP 4. If you are on a PHP 4 server (as many of us are) you have no choice but to manually alter the timestamps that the server returns.

--Jason