#22652 [Opn->Asn]: Please add functions to convert between timezones

ID: 22652 Updated by: derick@php.net Reported By: photon at comcast dot net -Status: Open +Status: Assigned Bug Type: Feature/Change Request Operating System: Linux PHP Version: 4.3.1 -Assigned To: +Assigned To: derick New Comment: This is in the works for PHP 5.1, please be patient for a while. Previous Comments: ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2004-06-14 14:29:03] daniel at NO dot brightbyte dot SPAM dot de The lack of timezone-conversion function is really a major problem. Please supply that functionality, there are plenty of libs out there to build on. With to regards to what the original author suggested: functions like converttime() are a BAD idead, as they suggest converting the time-stamp -- which is, by definition, always in UTC. Instead, it would be much better to give the date() function an optional third parameter: the time zone. This would be consistent with the way this is handeled in other languages, like Perl. For a start, it would even be sufficient to only allow simple offsets of the form +0500 there -- but it would indeed be extremely helpful to allow DST-Aware zones (like Olson-DB zones). I currently have this problem with a server in germany, that needs to display Vancouver time. As i don't want to do all the DST-conversion by hand, i'm stuck with using an external tool (written in perl) to convert from a unix-timestamp to a Vancouver date. This works well, but it's extremely slow. Also, it requires installation of a bunch of Perl-Modules on the server.... Oh, yea: this feature is still lacking under 4.3.4, and i see no mention in the documentation of supplying something like that in PHP 5... please, do! thanks. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [2003-03-11 23:02:21] photon at comcast dot net Hi, PHP seems to have some innate knowledge of time zones, but I find it very lacking for this very simple thing. Say I have a server in California, but I live in NJ. An m-time, say, of a file on the server is displayed on my website, but it's in Pacific Time. I want it in Eastern Time. It's not as simple as just adding 3 hours either, as Daylight Savings Time must be taken into effect. Not just one DST crossover either, as the crossovers will be at different times. To these ends, I propose three new date functions for PHP: a generalized converttime(int timestamp, string timezone1, string timezone2) which could be used easily to convert a time between two known DAYLIGHT-AWARE time zones, like so: echo converttime(time(), PT, ET) It would take the timestamp, see if it was daylight-time in PT, calculate the offset, check same for ET, convert. Also convertfromlocal which could do this (known ET timestamp, want to convert to local time): echo convertfromlocal(time(), ET) and convertolocal (say I knew I had a PT timestamp and I wanted it in ET (with the machine running on PST)) echo converttolocal(time(), PT) Thank you :) ------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- Edit this bug report at http://bugs.php.net/?id=22652&edit=1