Re: Re: User Timezone

On Oct 20, 2012, at 6:02 PM, Matijn Woudt wrote:

On Sun, Oct 21, 2012 at 12:56 AM, Karl DeSaulniers <karl@designdrumm.comwrote:

On Oct 20, 2012, at 7:23 AM, Maciek Sokolewicz wrote:

On 20-10-2012 09:39, Karl DeSaulniers wrote:

Hello all, Happy weekend. Hoping you can help me with an age old question. I am trying to get a users timezone for a purchase online. I know that php is not really able to get a timzone of a user because its a server side execution with the date functions. But I wanted to get a little help on my work around. I am hoping someone can help. TIA I have a form that a user must fill out in order to purchase anything. On this form they are required to put their city, state, country and zip code. These are all required fields. Now, I know there is a way to get a timezone offset if you have a location to offset. So is there a way based on the fields provided that I can get that offset for each user? (The users have to put a correct city, state, country and zip in order to get there purchase. This address has to match their paypal or cc address in order to purchase as well. So I know there will still be a margin of error with user manipulated info. So that is moot point for now.) My thoughts are to get a timezone offset based on the country and zip code, with a backup check of city state country zip. I just don't know where to start looking for how to get the timezone or UTC location based on country and zip or city state country zip.

Hi Karl, so basically what you're looking for is a database map between timezone and country/state/zip. Did you try to google such a thing? One of the first posts I found was a StackOverflow question about this; one of the answers mentioned just such a database on Tom Boutell's website (the same person who created the GD library [used for image-creation in php]): http://www.boutell.com/zipcodes/ It includes states, cities, zip codes, etc. for the USA. Since you specifically mentioned you want to find it "by state", it means you're mainly focussing on the USA (barely any other country even bothers with states). Apart from the above data, I'm sure you can find more on google. Good luck. - Tul

Thanks for the response. Yes, for the US I plan on calculating by state, but this website is not geared to just the US. So I am looking for a solution that lets me also calculate by country/region. Was looking on google and found geoip, but not sure if this will do the job I am looking for. Anyone with experience on geoip that can send pointers? Thanks, Best, Karl DeSaulniers Design Drumm http://designdrumm.com

Geo IP is based on IP, and I must warn you that IP data is not always accurate. Especially here in Europe, companies that are based in multiple countries sometimes only register their IPs in a single country, and share them between all the countries they are active in. This will give you wrong data from GeoIP. The time difference will only be 1 hour at max, but still.

That was what my own suspicions were leading to. I am familiar with the fact that ips can be spoofed. Thanks for the corroboration. Best, Karl DeSaulniers Design Drumm http://designdrumm.com